Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Twelve top books on history’s most notorious diseases

At Mental Floss Marla Mackoul tagged twelve books that dive "into an infamous disease and the people battling it in various capacities, showcasing the unwavering courage and resilience of individuals in the face of indescribable tragedy." One title on the list:
The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah

In The Fever, journalist Sonia Shah offers a compelling investigation into one of humanity’s oldest and deadliest foes: malaria. Despite over a century of knowledge on how to prevent this parasitic disease, it continues to infect almost 250 million people globally and claims nearly hundreds of thousands of lives. Shah traces malaria’s persistent impact on human history while exploring why efforts to eradicate it have repeatedly fallen short. Uniquely strengthened by Shah’s own original reporting from affected regions, The Fever illuminates the enduring threat of malaria and the need for renewed action.
Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, November 11, 2024

Nine titles featuring navigating grief through found family

Laura Buchwald is a writer and editor based in New York City. Her strong belief in the afterlife has led her to consult with multiple spiritual mediums, to convincing results. She has spent significant time in New Orleans researching ghosts and restaurant culture—two of her favorite things. She is co-host of the podcast People Who Do Things, a series of conversations about the creative process. Buchwald lives in Manhattan with her husband and dog.

Her new novel is The Coat Check Girl.

At Electric Lit Buchwald tagged nine "books that address the theme of navigating grief through found family." One title on the list:
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

The protagonist and narrator of this quiet story is mourning the loss of a dear friend and mentor who took his own life. She adopts his equally bereft Great Dane, Apollo, and embarks on an effort to understand who her friend was, flaws and all, while dealing with the threat of eviction for housing a dog in a pet-averse building. What at first seems a relationship born strictly of necessity soon comes to show our protagonist the ineffable bond we can share with our canine companions.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Friend is among Peter Ho Davies’s top ten books about the unknowable, Mia Levitin's ten top books about consent, Lee Conell's seven books about New York City’s stark economic divide and Eliza Smith's twenty books to help you navigate grief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Four horror books featuring artists

Delilah S. Dawson is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: Phasma, as well as Star Wars Galaxy's Edge: Black Spire, Mine, the Hit series, the Blud series, the creator-owned comics Ladycastle, Sparrowhawk, and Star Pig, and the Shadow series (written as Lila Bowen). With Kevin Hearne, she co-writes The Tales of Pell. She lives in Georgia with her family.

Dawson's new thriller is The Violence.

At CrimeReads the author tagged four horror books featuring creatives. One title on the list:
First of all, let’s remember that writers are artists, too. In Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays, a successful Hollywood screenwriter is finally on the cusp of making it big at the Oscars when the studio bigwigs force him to do the most predictable and soul-killing thing: kill off his gay characters to suit the algorithm. When he refuses, horrifying monsters from his own creations begin to stalk him, breaking the line between reality and fiction. Since the protagonist is a writer and the book is in first person point of view, the reader is treated to beautiful, thoughtful moments where Misha considers the relationship between the writer and story and how past trauma always finds a way in.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Seven dark tales haunted by music

Kate van der Borgh's new novel is And He Shall Appear. By day, the author is a freelance copywriter, and by night, she’s usually composing or playing music. She grew up in Lancashire and went on to study music at Cambridge, so there’s a reasonable amount of her in her narrator—including the fact that she was a pianist and reluctant bassoonist. She has, however, never had reason to suspect that her best friend has occult powers.

At Electric Lit van der Borgh tagged seven "novels in which music is used to communicate indescribable emotions and inexplicable experiences." One title on the list:
The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

In this ‘memoir’, a man recalls an unsettling friendship from his youth. And, from the first page, you know the story won’t be straightforward. Its narrator, Art Barbara, bears a striking resemblance to the author Paul Tremblay himself, not least in their shared love of punk band Hüsker Dü. And the friend Art has written about—a woman named Mercy—has made notes in the margins of this memoir, contesting Art’s view of what happened all those years ago. At the heart of the work is a question: in this toxic friendship, was Mercy an emotional vampire? Or something worse?

This is a story about yearning for lost youth and all the potential that came with it. And, by filling it with Art’s favourite bands—Talking Heads, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Patti Smith—Tremblay manages to underscore all the fear and dread with an exquisitely painful nostalgia. Eerie, funny, and ultimately extremely moving, this for me is Tremblay at his best.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, November 8, 2024

Ten great mysteries in the great outdoors

Margaret Mizushima writes the internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She is the recipient of a Colorado Authors League Award, a Benjamin Franklin Book Award, a CIBA CLUE Award, and two Willa Literary Awards by Women Writing the West. Her books have been finalists for a SPUR Award by Western Writers of America, a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award, and the Colorado Book Award. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest.

Mizushima's new Timber Creek K-9 mystery is Gathering Mist.

[Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah, Bertie, Lily and TessCoffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & HannahMy Book, The Movie: Burning RidgeThe Page 69 Test: Burning RidgeThe Page 69 Test: Tracking GameMy Book, The Movie: Hanging FallsThe Page 69 Test: Hanging FallsQ&A with Margaret MizushimaThe Page 69 Test: Striking RangeThe Page 69 Test: Standing DeadThe Page 69 Test: Gathering MistWriters Read: Margaret Mizushima (October 2024)]

At CrimeReads Mizushima tagged ten favorite mysteries set in the great outdoors. One title on the list:
Over the Edge by Kathleen Bryant

Lucky me, I was given an early read of Over the Edge, Bryant’s debut mystery set in Sedona’s red rock canyons. Here is what I thought of it: “Bryant weaves a rich tapestry out of all things Sedona. Loaded with details about the area’s people, its history, and the mystical beauty of its landscapes, Over the Edge delivers a unique and compelling outdoor mystery. There’s a lot to love about this book!” Don’t miss this cat-and-mouse thriller in which a former reporter pieces together her shattered memories, hoping to stop a killer before it’s too late.
Read about the other entries on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Over the Edge.

Q&A with Kathleen Bryant.

The Page 69 Test: Over the Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Eight of the best books about horses for adults

Christina Lynch is at the beck and call of two dogs, three horses, and a hilarious pony who carts her up and down mountains while demanding (and receiving) many carrots. Besides Pony Confidential, her new novel, she is also the author of two historical novels set in Italy and the coauthor of two comic thrillers set in Prague and Vienna. She teaches at College of the Sequoias and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

[My Book, The Movie: The Italian Party; The Page 69 Test: The Italian Party; Writers Read: Christina Lynch (April 2018); My Book, The Movie: Sally Brady's Italian Adventure;Writers Read: Christina Lynch (June 2023); The Page 69 Test: Sally Brady's Italian Adventure]

At Electric Lit Lynch tagged eight top horse books for adults, including:
Horse by Geraldine Brooks

This 2022 novel by the brilliant Australian-born journalist-turned-novelist Geraldine Brooks is a triple narrative of an enslaved young man working as a jockey in the antebellum South and Lexington, the horse he forms a relationship with; a 1950s art dealer interested in a painting of that horse; and a 21st century researcher at the Smithsonian who crosses paths with both the horse’s skeleton and an art historian researching the painting. Brooks masterfully weaves the stories to create tension and suspense. The memorable moment for me is the jockey’s flight from danger through a warzone on Lexington’s back –I was on the edge of my seat for every hoofbeat. Based on the real Lexington, Horse is a nod to the many African-Americans whose foundational contributions to the sport of horse racing in this country are only now being acknowledged and celebrated after centuries of erasure.
Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Ten novels centering women finding their power

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty novels and the Emmy Award–winning cohost of the literary TV show A Word on Words. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

[The Page 69 Test: Edge of BlackThe Page 69 Test: When Shadows FallMy Book, The Movie: When Shadows FallMy Book, The Movie: What Lies BehindThe Page 69 Test: What Lies BehindThe Page 69 Test: No One KnowsMy Book, The Movie: No One KnowsThe Page 69 Test: Lie to MeMy Book, The Movie: Good Girls LieThe Page 69 Test: Good Girls LieWriters Read: J. T. Ellison (January 2020)Q&A with J.T. EllisonThe Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing]

Ellison's new novel is A Very Bad Thing.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten novels that "celebrate women embracing their inner fires, mastering mystical abilities, and claiming power through acts of heroic leadership against daunting odds." One title on the list:
Circe by Madeline Miller

A reimagining of the mythological Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios, and the nymph Perse, a minor goddess who discovers her power in witchcraft. An absolute stunner of a tale, Circe is banished to the isle of Aiaia, where she takes full advantage of her burgeoning power to right the wrongs against her and womankind in general. Even her infamous encounter with Odysseus has a completely new spin, and she makes her own place in the history books. Without a single misstep throughout, Madeline Miller weaves a tale so heartbreaking and true that one wonders how mythology itself would have been reshaped were it understood to be true.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Circe is among Paula Munier's eight top works informed by The Odyssey, J. Nicole Jones's seven books about people accused of being witches, Diana Helmuth's seven top books about modern witchcraft, Megan Barnard's eleven books about misunderstood women in history & mythology, Rita Chang-Eppig's ten top books with irresistible anti-heroines, Emilia Hart's five novels featuring witchcraft, Brittany Bunzey's top ten books centering women in mythology, Mark Skinner's twenty top books in witch lit, Hannah Kaner's five best novels featuring gods, the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight novels of wonder and darkness by women writers, Kelly Barnhill's eight books about women's rage, Sascha Rothchild's most captivating literary antiheroes, Rachel Kapelke-Dale's eleven top unexpected thrillers about female rage, Kat Sarfas's thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spellsElodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts's thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Ten books on maritime disasters and ecological collapse

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV. Fire forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary is out now from Row House Publishing in 2024 and her novel All the Water in the World is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in early 2025.

At Lit Hub Caffall tagged ten books on maritime disasters and ecocollapse, including:
Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

Isaac’s Storm is a nonfiction recounting of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed twelve thousand people, the worst weather disaster in American history. I bought the bestseller on impulse in a Midway Airport bookshop on my way from Chicago to Boston to care for my father as he was dying from the kidney disease we share. I read it through on the plane, then read it again for weeks at his bedside.

It is a town-wreck, a hurricane book, but it also features ships caught in the storm at sea, ships wrecking into a city, and the heartbreaking wreck of the raft made to escape a flooding home. It conveys the science of weather, the history weather prediction, and the American politics that made the disaster worse.

It presents a fully realized world within the creative nonfiction, with recreated conversations, the heat of the Gulf Coast, the smell of fresh sawn wood, the sound of the Bavarian beer hall, the heartbreaking feeling of losing the grip of the hand of your beloved underwater.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Isaac’s Storm is a book that made a difference to Brian Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, November 4, 2024

Seven titles about the history of voting in America

Tommy Jenkins is the humanities division chair at Louisburg College in Louisburg, North Carolina, and an associate professor of English. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina, studied film at Columbia University, and received an MFA in fiction writing from North Carolina State University.

Jenkins is thea author of Drawing the Vote: A Graphic Novel History for Future Voters, illustrated by Kati Lacker.

At Electric Lit Jenkins tagged "a list of books that cover various significant aspects of the history of voting in the United States." One title on the list:
The Myth of Seneca Falls by Lisa Tetrault

Women’s suffragists have existed in America almost as long as the country itself. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the beginning of a concerted, focused women’s suffrage movement. The Myth of Seneca Falls deftly covers women’s voting at this time, the different factions that came together in Seneca Falls, and the aftermath of the convention. Why did it still take another 70 years for women to gain the right to vote? This book explains why in gripping detail.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Five of the best Christmas crime novels

Denzil Meyrick was educated in Argyll, then after studying politics, joined Strathclyde Police, serving in Glasgow. After being injured and developing back problems, he entered the business world, and has operated in many diverse roles, including director of a large engineering company and distillery manager, as well as owning a number of his own companies, such as a public bar and sales and marketing company. "D. A. Meyrick has also worked as a freelance journalist in both print and on radio. Well-known for his gritty series of police procedurals centred on the maverick DCI Daley," writes Mark Skinner at the Waterstones blog. "Meyrick has displayed his versatility in the past couple of years with his festive cosy crime mysteries - Murder at Holly House and The Christmas Stocking Murders."

One of Meyrick's favorite Christmas crime reads:
Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh

My late mother was a huge fan of Marsh’s writing. I remember the books on shelves in the house in the seventies and well beyond. This particular novel was written in 1972, but don’t let that put you off.

We’re back in the country house over Christmas, where resentments and rivalries, all stewing under the surface, manifest themselves in murder.

Ngaio Marsh, like P. D. James, is one of those who kept the Agatha Christie tradition alive into the modern era. Her books are all worth a read. This one is perfect for the festive season. Sit back and watch the plot evolve. You won’t be disappointed.
Read about the other entries on the list at the Waterstones blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Six coastal reads for brisk autumn days

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, All the Hearts You Eat, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction.

"I have a soft spot for the beach outside the thrills of summertime," she writes at CrimeReads. It's an atmosphere shared by her modern coastal gothic, All the Hearts You Eat.

One title on her list of "books that will coil you in that delicious dismal atmosphere and never let go:"
They Drown Our Daughters by Katrina Monroe

What better way to begin than with a book taking place at a haunted locale by the name of Cape Disappointment? We arrive outside the tourist season, where Meredith Strand has left her wife, taking their daughter back to her family’s home to stay with Meredith’s ailing mother. But family can be a curse, and as we discover early on (helped by a handy family tree!), Meredith’s family has endured a fate of being hunted by the sea for generations. If she isn’t careful, her daughter might be next. From the desolate lighthouse to the troublesome water to the secrets waiting in the depths, there’s a doomed nature to Cape Disappointment’s dread, but each clue into the past makes you eager to endure the next wave.
Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, November 1, 2024

Seven novels featuring protagonists over 70

Anna Montague is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn.

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is her first novel.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite novels "with senior protagonists on great adventures." One title on the list:
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton, a writer, embarks on a road trip with her ex-husband, William, in the hope of understanding a family secret just revealed to him. Over the course of the journey, Strout beautifully depicts the peaks and valleys of a marriage, and the ways in which family— despite everything that can tear them apart—will endure.
Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Fifteen bone-chilling new horror titles

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, Tekken 5, and other books.

He teaches at Portland State University.

At Publishers Weekly Seidlinger tagged fifteen "recent titles ... guaranteed not only to scare but to expand your definition of what horror can be." One book on the list:
The Devil by Name by Keith Rosson

Rosson’s stellar sequel to 2023’s Fever House maintains that book’s artful combination of chilling postapocalyptic worldbuilding and fully developed characters. Five years ago, “most of the world suddenly started devouring each other” after hearing “The Message,” a communication that American president Preston Yardley had intended to target only the populations of enemy countries. The aural weapon transformed those who heard it into bloodthirsty zombie-like beings dubbed the fevered. To get the outbreak under control, Yardley allies the federal government with Terradyne Industries, launching a harsh initiative to restore order. Hopes for a reversal of the apocalypse may lie with Naomi Laurent, a French woman rumored to somehow have gained the ability to reverse the effects of The Message and make the fevered human again. The search for Laurent is interwoven with the narratives of several other characters, including John Bonner, a security officer for Terradyne, and Katherine Moriarty, who tends to her son even after he becomes one of the fevered. Rosson’s sophisticated plotting manages to toggle between these perspectives without ever slackening the tension. This is literary horror at its finest.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Ten of the best books on guns in America

Catherine Habgood is a writer and editor living in New York City. She is one of the fiction editors at The Washington Square Review and is pursuing an MFA in Fiction at New York University.

"To understand America’s complicated culture of guns is an interdisciplinary pursuit: legal, historical, sociological, economic," she writes at Lit Hub, shere she tagged ten "exemplary attempts at that understanding." One title on the list:
Carl T. Bogus, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 2023

In Madison’s Militia, Carl T. Bogus shows that “the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but preserving slavery.” He argues that “a close examination of the context in which Madison drafted the Second Amendment reveals the text as an offering to white southerners preoccupied with containing slave rebellion and uneasy about losing control of the primary instrument for it, the militia” (The New England Quarterly). Carl T. Bogus is a professor of law emeritus at Roger Williams University, but Madison’s Militia is a history, told with the scrupulousness of a lawyer, “a surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment” (Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows).
Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Madison's Militia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Seven top book villains

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged seven favorite book villains. One title on the list:
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Be careful what you wish for — on the verge of death, this romantasy lover gets a second chance at life in between the pages of her favorite books. Loving this villain is a not-so-guilty pleasure you’ll want to tell all your friends about.
Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, October 28, 2024

Seven titles channeling the mythic horror of girlhood

Tyler Wetherall is a journalist and author. Her first book, No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run, came out in 2018, following her childhood spent on the run with her fugitive father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, British Vogue, The Guardian, National Geographic, LitHub, Vice, and Condé Nast Traveler, amongst others.

Wetherall's new novel, her debut, is Amphibian.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books that "borrow from the toolbox of magic realism and horror to convey the experience of girlhood in all its delight and barbarity." One title on the list:
Chlorine by Jade Song

Ren Yu is a mermaid. She tells you so on the first page. She doesn’t come from the tradition of red-haired shell-breasted singing mermaids; she is ripped, disinterested in humans, particularly men, and, by the climax of the book—she’s bloody. Ren narrates the story of her self-determined transformation starting from her life as a young competitive swimmer, so addicted to the water and the race that she licked the chlorine from her skin when she missed the pool. But as the pressure to win, and to prove herself by getting into an Ivy League college mounts, along with cruelties from her crew of fellow swimmers, she starts to pursue her longing to be a mermaid with a near holy embrace of physical pain.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Six great suspense novels featuring mysterious mansions

Tom Ryan is an award winning author, screenwriter and producer. His YA mystery Keep This to Yourself was the winner of the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best YA Thriller, the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Best YA Crime Book, and the 2021 Ann Connor Brimer Award, and is currently being adapted for television. His followup YA mystery I Hope You're Listening was the winner of the 2021 Lambda “Lammy” Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He was a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction.

Ryan's new novel, his adult mystery debut, is The Treasure Hunters Club.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "fantastic novels featuring creepy houses that will keep you on the edge of your seat." One title on the list:
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Fingersmith is one of my all time favourite novels, featuring a twist so delicious and elegantly orchestrated that I gasped out loud when it was sprung upon me. Set in Victorian-era England, Fingersmith is a crime novel centering on two young women, Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly, whose lives become entangled in a complex web of betrayal and deception. Sue, raised in a den of thieves, is recruited to help swindle Maud, a wealthy orphan, out of her inheritance by posing as her maid. As Sue integrates into Maud’s household, she discovers unexpected feelings for her, which complicates the plan. However, nothing is as it seems, and the novel is filled with twists and reversals, exploring themes of class, identity, and betrayal.
Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

Fingersmith is among Jean Louise's five books with first-rate worldbuilding, Jenni Murray's six best books about history’s forgotten women, Santa Montefiore's six best books, Stuart Jeffries's five sexiest scenes in literature, and Kirsty Logan's ten best LGBT sex scenes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Nine gripping thrillers featuring women on the run

At Likewise Turner Gray & Likewise Pix tagged nine "tantalizing thrillers that delve deep into the intense journeys of women who find themselves fleeing from danger, unraveling mysteries, and discovering unexpected secrets along the way." One title on the list:
Wallace Stroby’s "Heaven's a Lie" weaves a gritty tale of desperation and moral ambiguity. Joette Harper, a widow with mounting debts, sees a chance for a new start in the form of a briefcase filled with cash found at a crash site. However, the bag's origins tie her into a deadly game with its dangerous owner. Readers will find themselves enthralled in Joette's journey of survival as she navigates gang violence and the weight of her decisions.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Heaven's a Lie.

Q&A with Wallace Stroby.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, October 25, 2024

Five essential titles for understanding Native American history

Kathleen DuVal is a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her field of expertise is early American history, particularly interactions among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the borderlands of North America.

Her books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution and Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.

At Lit Hub DuVal tagged five books that "go deeply into Native American history, and all are written by Native authors." One title on the list:
Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places

A professor at Harvard, Deloria (Yankton Dakota) wrote this book to directly counter the myth that Native Americans are people of the past rather than modern human beings, who have changed with the times, just like everyone else. He presents image after image of Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries doing the kinds of things that non-Natives at the time were insisting they couldn’t do: playing baseball, riding in automobiles, and singing opera.
Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Five top books about badass madwomen

Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of four novels that have been published in a total of twenty-one countries around the world: The Madwomen of Paris (2023), Wunderland (2019), The Gods of Heavenly Punishment (2012), and The Painter from Shanghai (2007).

[The Page 69 Test: The Painter from ShanghaiThe Page 69 Test: The Gods of Heavenly PunishmentWriters Read: Jennifer Cody Epstein (May 2019)The Page 69 Test: WunderlandQ&A with Jennifer Cody EpsteinThe Page 69 Test: The Madwomen of ParisMy Book, The Movie: The Madwomen of Paris]

She is the recipient of the 2014 Asia Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award for fiction, and was longlisted for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.

At Shepherd Epstein tagged five of her favorite books about badass madwomen. One title on the list:
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

This is probably the most powerful example of literary pastiche novels I’ve read, not just because it takes on one of the most beloved novels in English literature—Jane Eyre—but because it brutally turns that novel’s premises on their gentrified heads.

I am truly awed by how vibrantly Rhys inhabits Antoinette, Rochester’s doomed wife, weaving in themes of colonialism and gendered power into Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic romance and, in the process, making it a kind of subversive and gritty feminist and anti-colonial manifesto.

Rhys’s depiction of Antoinette’s descent into madness is so visceral and believable that you are (or at least I am) all but cheering as she literally burns the patriarchy to the ground. I also love that while it’s generally considered Rhys’s masterpiece, she wrote it in her seventies.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Wide Sargasso Sea is among Sophie Ratcliffe's five top books inspired by classic novels, Jane Corry's ten heroines who kept their motives hidden, Siân Phillips's six favorite books, Richard Gwyn's top ten books in which things end badly, and Elise Valmorbida's top ten books on the migrant experience.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Eight short stories and novels that are filled with suspense and dread

Megan Staffel splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and a farm in western New York State. Her new novel, The Causative Factor, is her sixth book of fiction. Her previous work includes two collections of short fiction, The Exit Coach and Lessons in Another Language, and the novels, The Notebook of Lost Things and She Wanted Something Else.

At Electric Lit Staffel tagged eight ominous short stories and novels that will leave you on the edge of your seat. One title on the list:
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

Most of the action in this novel takes place in a large and successful Chinese restaurant in a small midwestern city where Leo Chao, owner and employer, maintains a tense environment, verbally abusing family and staff. The ominous is evoked not only by this tyrannical father and employer but also, and more dramatically, by an outdated freezer room in the basement of the restaurant. Bribes have allowed it to pass inspection, and the reader learns in the beginning of the novel that its major defect is a door that tends to lock the unsuspecting inside. That is why a key is always kept on an interior shelf. When tensions escalate and emotions run high, the reader suspects the freezer will become a weapon.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Seven top literary horror novels

Alena Bruzas grew up in Seattle and currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Ever Since, and she hopes her writing will find the people who need it most. When she's not writing, Bruzas serves on the board for Ten Thousand Villages, Lincoln. She also occasionally cooks dinner, worries about commas, and wanders the prairie.

Bruzas's new novel is To the Bone.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven favorite literary horror novels, including:
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

I am Legend by Richard Matheson is ostensibly about vampires, but really it’s a grandfather to zombie horror and the last man on earth trope. Robert Neville is a scientist, alone and surrounded by the infected, vampire-like creatures which Neville hunts in the daytime, killing them in their beds and sometimes experimenting on them to “find a cure” or maybe just out of curiosity. Eventually he encounters a woman, Ruth, and (of course) they fall in love. But, alas, it turns out Ruth is a vampire and Neville is a bigot. The infected have formed a society and Neville, finally captured, is to be executed for his heinous crimes. As he faces the crowds, he reflects that he has become a legend, a horror story that the vampires will pass on to their children, like what vampires once were to humans. I love this book because it flips your expectation on its head, forcing you to consider what makes a monster, and if, under the right circumstances, you would be the horror story.
Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

I Am Legend is among David Koepp's seven essential contagion novels, Jeff Somers's five notable books totally unlike their adaptations, Jonathan Hatfull's ten best vampire novels ever, Jennifer Griffith Delgado's top eleven mind-blowing surprise endings in science fiction and fantasy literature and Kevin Jackson's top ten vampire novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, October 21, 2024

The 10 best books for understanding the opioid crisis

One title from Lit Hub's list of the ten best books for understanding the opioid crisis:
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (2022)

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Instead of the institutional poverty of Victorian England, it is Appalachia, where Kingsolver is from, at the beginning of the opioid epidemic. In fact, she got the idea for the book sitting at the very desk where Dickens wrote much of David Copperfield in England. She thought about how she and Dickens were in the same boat, wanting to tell their own story–though it was a story people might not want to hear. Kingsolver claims that Dickens spoke to her, saying: “Let the kid tell the story. No one doubts the child” (NYT). And so she did. The book tells the story of Demon Copperhead’s life in his own “wise, unwavering voice,” (Pulitzer Prize) Demon’s narration is “one of the great virtuosic vocal performances” (Richard Powers, author of The Overstory). “Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient” (Beth Macy, author of Dopesick).
Read about the other entries on the list.

Demon Copperhead is among Brittany Bunzey's five best books inspired by Charles Dickens's classics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Eight books to upend your perception of famous writers

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an Emerita Poet Laureate of Sonoma County and a faculty member at UC Davis. She has authored two biographies: Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (2020) and Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb (2024). Her fourth poetry collection, West : Fire : Archive, was recently published by The Center for Literary Publishing. Dunkle writes a weekly blog called Finding Lost Voices, which revives the voices of women who have been forgotten or misremembered and serves as the Poetry and Translation Director at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. She’s on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

At Electric Lit Dunkle tagged eight books in which "you’ll find a different take on literary history, where you’ll not only see the literary elite you thought you knew differently, but you’ll also discover new figures." One title on the list:
Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation by Emily Van Duyne

By the time I entered college and grad school, my mostly male professors told me that Slyvia Plath was just a young woman’s poet, as Emily Van Duyne writes in Loving Sylvia Plath, “a phase to pass through and grow out of in order to be taken seriously.” Van Duyne also reminds us how “Plath’s suicide is frequently presented as a capricious choice of a spoiled girl seeking revenge, rather than the culmination of a mental health crisis.” In her critical biography, Van Duyne fearlessly takes on the tired narrative that’s been cemented around Plath’s life and challenges it to include the sexual and physical violence Plath endured while married to Ted Hughes, along with how Hughes managed to control the narrative about Plath for decades after her death. This refreshing narrative takes on the immense task of finding our way back to the person Plath really was.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Eight works informed by "The Odyssey"

Paula Munier is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place and The Wedding Plot both appeared on several “Best Of” lists. Home at Night, the fifth book in the series, was inspired by her volunteer work as a Natural Resources Steward of New Hampshire. Along with her love of nature, Munier credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep affection for New England as her series’ major influences. A literary agent by day, she’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie: The True Story of a Boy, a Mom, and a Very, Very Bad Beagle.

[Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear; My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones; The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of BonesWriters Read: Paula Munier (October 2019); My Book, The Movie: Blind Search; The Page 69 Test: Blind SearchMy Book, The Movie: The Hiding PlaceThe Page 69 Test: The Hiding PlaceQ&A with Paula MunierMy Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot; The Page 69 Test: The Wedding PlotWriters Read: Paula Munier (July 2022); Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2023); My Book, The Movie: Home at Night; The Page 69 Test: Home at Night; My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods; The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods; Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2024)]

Munier's new Mercy Carr mystery is The Night Woods.

At CrimeReads Munier tagged eight favorite "books and films and TV shows also informed by The Odyssey," including:
Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?

I love Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, and this entry is one of the very best. And its aspects inspired by The Odyssey are only part of the reason why.
Read about the other entries on the list.

When Will There Be Good News? is among the Christian Science Monitor's best novels of 2008.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, October 18, 2024

Eight titles about complicated desire

Kate Hamilton is a Professor of English at a university where she teaches literature, literary theory, and women’s writing. She has published numerous books and dozens of academic articles and chapters on a wide array of authors, and she has given talks and keynote speeches about literature, pedagogy, and sexual violence at conferences and workshops throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Her first trade publication, Mad Wife uses these decades of work on literature and sexual violence to clarify her own dark past and illuminate clearer paths forward for other women.

At Lit Hub Hamilton tagged eight books "concerning women’s desire, consent, and autonomy, especially as distorted by marriage." One title on the list:
Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

Hot Milk imagines what a woman discovering her ferocity early, before being damaged by marriage, might look like. In a dusty seaside town in Spain, a woman in her twenties and dislocated in all ways, Sofia, finds her desires—sexual and otherwise—and begins to enact them while protecting herself from the emotional onslaughts of her parasitic mother, narcissistic father, and a manipulative lover.

Repeated encounters with “medusa” jellyfish transform her from meek subservience into audacity, rage, and appetite, refiguring her skin as they “sting her into desire” and make her” monstrous.” By novel’s end, Sofia has no need for Mad Wife. I love that about her.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Eight titles about finding magic in the domestic

Cameron Walker is a writer whose work often focuses on the connections between people and the world around them. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the debut short story collection How to Capture Carbon.

At Electric Lit Walker tagged eight books of
Kitchen Surrealism or perhaps Domestic Fantastic for the charming consonance. Stories of this type can interweave fairytale with fixing a broken faucet, or find the uncanny in untangling the box of charger cords (one of my least favorite tasks), or tell a ghost story in which the haunting is less about horror and more of a way to understand the world of the living.
One title on Walker's list:
Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark

This beautifully uncanny story collection is filled with mothers, fathers, stepmothers, brothers and grandmothers, all of them doing ordinary things against a backdrop of the increasingly surreal. In one story, the narrator’s mother calls from the dentist every day—for ten years. “’I really wish you would get married already,’ she sighs. She sounds like her mouth is slowly filling up with mice.” In another, a mother who works to remove lice from other children’s heads finds that her own sons have turned into gigantic daughters with lice densely populating first their hair, then their knees, as rainwater slowly floods their house. These stories themselves create a slow flood of strangeness that helped me to see both the bizarre and the beautiful in domestic life.
Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Four works of crime fiction that features children

Julia Dahl is the author of Conviction, Run You Down, and Invisible City, which was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages. A former reporter for CBS News and the New York Post, she now teaches journalism at NYU.

Dahl's newest novel is I Dreamed of Falling.

At CrimeReads the author tagged four works of crime fiction with children as prominent characters, including:
Emma Donoghue, Room

While not marketed as crime fiction, Room is the story of an ongoing crime, and its aftermath. The book is narrated by 5-year-old Jack, whose entire life has played out in a single room (a shed) where he is held with his mother, who was kidnapped two years before he was born. What is so astonishing about this book is the way, in the word’s of New York Times reviewer Aimee Bender, “Jack’s eyes remake the familiar.” By privileging the little boy’s voice, we see the world anew, and it is both beautiful and utterly terrifying.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Room is among Greg Mitchell's ten top escapes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue