Four cabin-oriented crime & horror titles

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged four "recent and upcoming novels in which everything is already terrible and then the cabin makes things worse," including:

TJ Klune, The Bones Beneath My Skin

Klune has crafted a moving story of found family in this X-Files-influenced thriller perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World. The Bones Beneath My Skin follows Nate, a journalist at loose ends, who finds a mysterious girl and her hunky bodyguard hiding out in his family’s summer cabin. He soon joins them in their dangerous quest to reunite her with her family, as her former captors follow in hot pursuit. As fast-paced as it is warm-hearted!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about trees

Callum Robinson makes all manner of things from all manner of woods for some of the most influential brands in the world. He is creative director at Method Studio, the company he established with his wife, designer and lecturer Marisa Giannasi, almost fifteen years ago. Taught by his father – now one of the UK’s foremost “Master Woodcarvers” – his work has been exhibited widely. He works and writes from a studio and workshop in a forest, beside a loch, nestled in the Scottish hills.

Robinson's first book is Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, a memoir of his unorthodox creative education.

At the Guardian he tagged "five very different books about trees." One title on the list:

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

Evocatively set in rural Norway and the remote Shetland Islands archipelago, Mytting’s gripping mystery gradually works away at the knotty family secrets of Edvard Hirifjell – the untimely death of his parents, a bitter wartime feud and a priceless missing inheritance – ultimately revealing a history swirling with all the tension, drama and beauty of the unique grain that’s hidden inside every tree.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: seven books that celebrate trees in all of their glory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles to steam up your thriller reads list

Michelle Cruz is a seventh-generation native Texan that allegedly writes suspense. In a previous life, she served as a commissioned Air Force officer and a congressional staffer. These days, she resides in the Texas Hill Country where she can often be found lurking at Summer Moon or stuffing her face with BBQ or Tex-Mex. Even When You Lie is her debut novel. She particularly enjoys tormenting her critique partners with plot bunnies and first drafts she has no intention of revising. When her children annoy her, she retreats to her office and spite reads to escape the realities of life, yet somehow she still has a TBR pile.

At Shepherd she tagged five favorite books to steam up your thriller reads list, including:

What Still Burns by Elle Grawl

Growing up in rural East Texas, some of my earliest memories center around the fire station where my father was a volunteer firefighter.

Although this book is set in Northern California, it manages to render the small town and its politics familiar enough that I can almost smell the smoke. Lex’s reluctance to return to where everyone else in her immediate family died is tempered by the romance igniting between her and an old flame, but everyone has secrets here—and some can be deadly.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about Argentina’s “Disappeared”

Rebecca J. Sanford is the author of The Disappeared, recipient of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Rising Star Award. She studied at a lycée in southern France and earned a degree in French and creative writing from Loyola University. Sanford holds an MA from the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School in NYC and conducted research for her master’s thesis in Buenos Aires with the Identity Archive of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. This work inspired The Disappeared.

At Electric Lit she tagged "seven books that center the lives, experiences, and long wakes of grief left behind by those taken during Argentina’s so-called 'dirty war'." One title on the list:

Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel

As a medical student in 1976, Tomás Oriilla would do anything for his childhood crush, Isabel—even if her ideological fervor puts them both at risk. Ten years later, Tomás is in exile, living in New York as Thomas Shore. He is called back to Buenos Aires, where ghosts of the disappeared force him to confront the choices he once made in the name of love. A haunting journey into the past, Hades explores love and complicity through the distorted and surreal lens of individual and collective memory.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best books about the Olympics

Emily Burack is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects.

At Town & Country she tagged ten of the best books about the Olympics, including:

Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water

The title of Vicki Valosik's mesmerizing new history of synchronized swimming comes from a quote from Esther Williams, the "godmother" of the sport: "If you’re not strong enough to swim fast, you’re probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty.'" Valosik, herself a competitive synchronized swimmer, traces the origins of aquatic performance, from vaudeville stages to the Olympics.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best balls in literature

In 2010 at the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best balls in literature.

One novel on the list:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Fanny Price cannot bloom unseen for ever. Sir Thomas Bertram stages a ball at which she will come out into society. She gets to dance with Edmund, which is nice, but has Henry Crawford at her too, with all his sexy compliments. By three o'clock in the morning Fanny is all "knocked up", as her brother delicately puts it.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Mansfield Park is among Amanda Craig's best books about nannies, Salley Vickers's favorite books about family dynamics and Travis Elborough's top ten books featuring parks. Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park is among Melissa Albert's five fictional characters who deserved better than they got.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven antidetective novels

Eugenie Montague's short fiction has been published by NPR; Amazon; Faultline; Mid-American Review; Fiction Southeast and Flash Friday, a flash fiction series from Tin House and the Guardian Books Network. Her piece "Breakfast" was selected by Amy Hempel for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2017. Her hybrid work, Treating Attachment Disorder, won Eggtooth Editions' 2016 chapbook contest. She earned her MFA from the University of California, Irvine and lives in El Paso, Texas.

Montague's debut novel is Swallow the Ghost.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven favorite antidetective novels, including:

The Taiga Sydrome, by Cristina Rivera Garza

A woman (an ex-detective with many failures) is hired by a man to find his lover who abandoned him, fleeing with another into the “taiga,” a hostile forest at the ends of the earth. The detective and her translator arrive in the taiga, where they meet a wolf, a feral child, a capitalist, and a group of lumberjacks. Part detective story, part fairy tale, part a thing only CRG could think up, The Taiga Syndrome is an affecting book about the end of love and contains some of my favorite sentences (as translated by Jill Levine and Aviva Kana): “Look at this: your knees. They are used for kneeling upon reality and also crawling, terrified.” (Lydia Davis’ The End of the Story is a different kind of antidetective about the end of a relationship, I would argue, and I would recommend).

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that shine a light on overlooked women in history

Harriet Constable is a writer and filmmaker based in London. Her debut novel is The Instrumentalist. The book is inspired by the true story of Anna Maria della Pietà, who was an orphan, musical prodigy and student of Antonio Vivaldi. It has been named an Observer top 10 debut for 2024.

Constable’s journalism and documentary work is featured in outlets including The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, NPR, The Economist. She produced for BBC News at Six and Ten during the pandemic, and is a Rough Guide to Kenya co-author. She was part of the team that made the BAFTA-award winning 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room.

Originally from London, Constable worked at the Financial Times before spending several years in Nairobi and then Johannesburg. She grew up playing the flute and piano and singing with her mother, a classically trained musician.

At Electric Lit Constable tagged seven favorite "books exploring history from the female perspective, reimagining what has been lost." One title on the list:

Matrix by Lauren Groff

In 12th century England there lived an extraordinary woman named Marie de France. While much of her history has been lost, in Matrix, Lauren Groff paints her as an assertive, visionary leader and queer woman. She marshals her convent of nuns into bloody battle and actively shapes the world she wants to see.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Matrix is among Maggie Nye's five titles that explore female friendship & adolescence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six crime novels with a focus on nature

Ayla Rose is an author and lawyer who lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont. When not writing, she enjoys kayaking, hiking, gardening, and spending time with her husband, sons, and the family’s three dogs.

Her new novel, Murder on Devil's Pond, is book 1 in The Hummingbird Hollow B&B Mystery series.

At CrimeReads Rose tagged six "favorite crime novels (or series) with a focus on the outdoors." One title on the list:

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips is a character-driven thriller that takes place on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. The book explores the lives of several women and girls, including a detective, a mother, a witness, and a neighbor, linked by an unthinkable crime in this small community after two young girls go missing. I was immediately drawn in by the hauntingly desolate, yet beautiful, landscape, which is inextricably intertwined with the well-drawn characters and their story.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Disappearing Earth is among Scott Alexander Howard's eight novels from across the world about isolation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about yearning

August Thompson was born and raised in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, before he attended middle school in West LA. After surviving California optimism, he moved to NYC for his bachelor’s, studied in Berlin, and taught English in Spain for two years. He recently received his MFA at New York University’s creative writing program as a Goldwater Fellow.

Thompson's new book is Anyone’s Ghost.

At the Guardian the author tagged "five novels that capture that lightning-struck feeling" that "is one of the great rites of passage of youth – wanting someone, wanting to be them, wanting to be wanted." One title on the list:

A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor

Taylor’s masterful look at bad timing and indecision is at once devastating and cosy, as it underlines the subtle intimacy of understated affection. Set in England in the interwar years and post-1945 peacetime, the novel traces the love and lives of Harriet and Vesey. Harriet considers herself unexceptional and wants a conventional life. Vesey has the arrogance and ambition needed to try to become an actor. The two meet as teenagers and find an overwhelming and uneasy love. Over the ensuing 20 years, Taylor interweaves their narratives as each makes potent choices about the need for comfort versus freedom while looking back at a romance that could have been.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five strong female leads in fiction

Born in New Zealand, Sarah A. Parker now lives on Australia's Gold Coast with her husband and three young children.

At the Waterstones blog she writes:

When the Moon Hatched—the first book in my Moonfall Series—[is] a new fantasy romance that takes place in a rich world full of dragons and unique creatures, the story itself centred around resilience, grief, and the eternal power of love.

First things first, I love strong female leads. I find them endearing, inspiring, and thought provoking. As some of you may know, the FMC in my own story is a strong female protagonist with quick wit and a dark past, and writing her has been an incredible journey that has challenged me in the most surprising ways.

Parker tagged "five other stories with strong female leads," including:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

It’s fair to say this story set my heart on fire. Katniss is a blaze of courage, hope, compassion and resistance in a cruel dystopian world, her journey from resourceful to the symbol of a revolution both harrowing and inspiring. Her resilience and fierce loyalty to those less capable help define her as a powerful force against oppressive regimes.

In my opinion, Katniss is one of the most iconic heroines in contemporary literature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Hunger Games also appears on Robert Lee Brewer's list of ten of the best dystopian novels ever written, Patti Callahan's list of five SFF books featuring protective siblings, Off the Shelf's list of ten incredible literary parties, Chevy Stevens's list of the best survivalist thrillers, Amanda Craig's top ten list of the best-dressed characters in fiction, Sarah Driver's list of her five favorite fictional siblings, Meghan Ball's list of eight books or series for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, Jeff Somers's lists of "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other," top five list of dystopian societies that might actually function, and top eight list of revolutionary SF/F novels, P.C. Cast’s top ten list of all-time favorite reads for fantasy fans, Keith Yatsuhashi's list of five gateway books that opened the door for him to specific genres, Catherine Doyle's top ten list of doomed romances in YA fiction, Ryan Britt's list of six of the best Scout Finches -- "headstrong, stalwart, and true" young characters -- from science fiction and fantasy, Natasha Carthew's top ten list of revenge reads, Anna Bradley ten best list of literary quotes in a crisis, Laura Jarratt's top ten list of YA thrillers with sisters, Tina Connolly's top five list of books where the girl saves the boy, Sarah Alderson's top ten list of feminist icons in children's and teen books, Jonathan Meres's top ten list of books that are so unfair, SF Said's top ten list of unlikely heroes, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top ten list of fictional families you could probably abide during holiday season and top eight list of books perfect for reality TV fiends, Chrissie Gruebel's list of favorite fictional fashion icons, Lucy Christopher's top ten list of literary woods, Robert McCrum's list of the ten best books with teenage narrators, Sophie McKenzie's top ten list of teen thrillers, Gregg Olsen's top ten list of deadly YA books, Annalee Newitz's list of ten great American dystopias, Philip Webb's top ten list of pulse-racing adventure books, Charlie Higson's top ten list of fantasy books for children, and Megan Wasson's list of five fantasy series geared towards teens that adults will love too.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six female characters that defy traditional archetypes

Caroline Wolff is a writer and editor. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. She lives in downtown Manhattan.

The Wayside is Wolff's debut novel.

At CrimeReads she tagged six favorite female characters who

are chronically misunderstood and villainized for acting or believing differently. In the hands of another writer (and perhaps written in a different era), they could be boiled down to crazy and used for shock value. Instead, these women wield their differences in perspective with agency, and in the end, they’re proven right to disagree with the people in power.

One title on the list:

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Tokarczuk walked so Moshfegh could run. Drive Your Plow (which was first published in its original Polish in 2009, then translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and re-released in 2019) follows Janina, a 70-something retired bridge engineer who devotes her days to astrology, translating William Blake, and acting as an off-season caretaker for the summer cottages in her isolated village near the Czech border. When the neighborhood’s colorful cast of characters keep turning up dead, Janina takes it upon herself to solve the murders. A staunch vegetarian and protector of animal rights, she begins to believe the local wildlife are imparting vengeance upon those who hunt them for sport.

Death in Her Hands [by Ottessa Moshfegh] and Drive Your Plow draw a lot of similarities, and some of those similarities run deeper than the conceit. Like Death in Her Hands, I read this less as a murder mystery and more as a characterological study on a type that’s often overlooked or misunderstood in culture—the eccentric older woman with radical ideas. Though the setting is contemporary, it has a distinctly folkloric quality to it, helped along by Janina’s stylistic tendency to capitalize improper nouns (Catastrophe, Ailments, Dusk). If not for mentions of phones and laptops, you get the sense that this could be a diaristic account of a 17th-century witch hunt, told from the perspective of the accused woman. Because this is, in fact, proven to be a kind of modern witch hunt: Of course the coterie of powerful men that run the town are threatened by the older woman who fights vigilantly on behalf of the animals—which puts a damper on their favorite pastime of game hunting. Darkly funny, earnest, and, yes, a little kooky, Janina has become one of my favorite characters in contemporary literature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is among Andrea Carlisle's seven books about women over 60 who defy societal expectations and Francesca McDonnell Capossela's seven titles about women committing acts of violence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels set in Philadelphia with mostly happy endings

C.J. Spataro is an award-winning short fiction writer whose work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including Taboos & Transgressions, Iron Horse Literary Review, december, Sequestrum, and Exacting Clam. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in Publishing programs at Rosemont College and was a founding partner of Philadelphia Stories. Her debut novel, More Strange Than True, was published by Sagging Meniscus Press in June 2024 and was recently named to Reactor’s Can’t Miss Indie Speculative Books for Spring.

At Electric Lit Spataro tagged eight "novels set in Philly with mostly happy endings," including:

The Blessings by Elise Juska

If I had to pick the most Philly book on this list, it would be a toss-up between The Blessings and Silver Linings Playbook. The Blessings is really a novel in stories, each chapter a different piece of the tapestry that is this large Irish-American-Catholic family. The Blessings are a close-knit clan and do their best to love and support each other, especially when times get tough. As close as they are, many of the Blessings also feel an uncomfortable amount of loneliness, wanting to find out who they are on their own, but always longing to be in the comforting company of the extended family. They’re all struggling to figure out not only how they fit into their family but the larger world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen of the brattiest books

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged sixteen books for the summer of brat.

You might be wondering: what exactly makes someone brat? It isn’t just the signature lime green accessories or nonchalant attitude — being brat is about being unfiltered, bold and most importantly, unapologetically yourself.

The list of some of the "brattiest books — stories that are a little bit edgy and oftentimes messy," includes:

Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz

One of our culture’s original brats, Eve Babitz chronicles a young girl’s budding career aspirations while drifting through Los Angeles and New York City. Glamorous and gritty, Sex and Rage will put you in a dreamlike trance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that wine & dine

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn is a former model who lives in London, Ontario with her husband and their four children. She is the author of three young adult novels: Firsts, Last Girl Lied To, and All Eyes On Her, under the name L.E. Flynn.

Her adult fiction debut, The Girls Are All So Nice Here, was named a USA Today Best Book of 2021, sold in 11 territories worldwide, and became an instant bestseller in Canada. Her new novel for adults is Till Death Do Us Part.

At CrimeReads Flynn tagged five books "that will satisfy any craving—and perhaps drive you to open a bottle of wine, shake up a cocktail, or make a restaurant reservation ASAP." One title on the list:

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

I can’t think of a more fun or immersive summer read than The Sicilian Inheritance. This story centers around Sara, who is newly divorced and reckoning with both the failure of her marriage and business when she receives a letter from her beloved great-aunt Rosie, who recently passed away, leaving Sara with a plane ticket to Sicily, the deed to a plot of land, and the revelation that Sara’s great-grandmother might not have died of natural causes after all. She flies there to find answers, and the Sicilian setting is described in sumptuous detail as author Jo Piazza takes us on a twisting, thrilling dual-timeline adventure. Passages about local cuisine are stunningly lush—I could almost taste the wine grapes and cannoli.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books with empowering insights about embracing change with resilience & grace

Mary Jones’s stories and essays have appeared in many journals including Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Subtropics, EPOCH, Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, The Hopkins Review, Gay Mag, The Normal School, Epiphany, Santa Monica Review, Brevity and elsewhere. The recipient of a summer prose fellowship from The University of Arizona Poetry Center, her work has been cited as notable in The Best American Essays and appeared in The Best Microfiction 2022. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches fiction writing at UCLA Extension. Originally from Upstate New York, she lives in Los Angeles.

Jones's new collection is The Goodbye Process: Stories.

At Electric Lit the writer tagged nine transformative books about letting go and moving on, including:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The memoir Wild follows Strayed as she hikes 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail four years after her beloved mother’s death from cancer. Strayed confronts her grief head-on, processing memories of her mother’s death and the dissolution of her marriage. Each step is a step toward letting go of her pain, and moving on from her past mistakes and traumas.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Wild is among Jill Talbot's seven realistic portraits of mothers and daughters in literature, Katherine May's nine top books on the very human importance of walking, Monique Alice's six books that will inspire you to lace up your hiking boots, and Jeff Somers's five top books with Mother Nature as antagonist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books about India's politics

Rahul Bhatia is an independent writer whose profiles of power brokers and investigations of technology adoption highlight themes of accountability and access in India. His reportage has been published by the Caravan, the Guardian Long Read, The New Yorker, and Reuters.

He was awarded a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowship in 2022-23, won the True Story Award in 2024, and received a Ramnath Goenka Award and a Mumbai Press Club Red Ink Award in 2015.

Bhatia's new book is The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy.

At the Guardian he tagged five books that "speak to some of the themes dominant in India these days – caste, propaganda, political prisoners, the weaponisation of state machinery, listless youth and nostalgia for gentler times." One title on the list:

Malevolent Republic by KS Komireddi

There has been no angrier book about India in recent years, no book that contains as sustained a primal scream. Komireddi’s rollicking reported polemic is a critique of modern India and the people whose missteps and disingenuousness led it to the brink of disaster. He spares no one – not Modi, not the Gandhi family, not broader Indian society.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nineteen top Greek myth retellings

At the Waterstones blog Mark Skinner tagged nineteen of the best Greek myth retellings, including:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

A riveting tale of love, ambition and immortal fame, this award-winning debut from the author of Circe retells the story of the Trojan War and its greatest hero from the point of view of his closest friend Patroclus.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Song of Achilles is among Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles reimagining the monstrous women of mythology & history

Nataly Gruender was born and raised in Arizona and found an escape from the desert heat through her library card. She studied English, Creative Writing, and Classics at the University of Arizona and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course. Giving in to the siren call of New York, Gruender booked it across the country, and when she's not working or writing she likes to pet other people's dogs and spend too much time in used bookstores. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Gruender's new novel is Medusa.

At Electric Lit she tagged

eight books I’ve loved that feature women of mythology, folklore, or history seizing control of their narrative and encouraging us to reconsider what it means to be the villain in the story, just like Medusa.

One title on the list:

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Richly inspired by the cultures of the pre-Columbian Americas, the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy introduces Xiala, a disgraced captain with a siren’s power to control seas and minds alike, Naranpa, a Sun Priest struggling to hold her society together as the cosmos predict her downfall, and Serapio, a blinded man fated to become a god. Tasked with sailing Serapio to the Sun Priest’s city, Xiala reckons with past mistakes and how her role in the web of destiny could change the world as she knows it. Roanhorse’s captivating world-building creates a stunning backdrop for her characters, who are as compelling in their ambitions as they are in their carnage.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight classic retellings for crime fiction fans

Erica Wright's new novel Hollow Bones, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is out now! Her essay collection Snake was released as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her mystery Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was called "a clever little whodunnit" in The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of five other books, including the poetry collections Instructions for Killing the Jackal and All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Wright was the senior poetry editor at Guernica Magazine for more than a decade and currently teaches at Bellevue University. She holds degrees from New York University and Columbia University. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family.

At CrimeReads Wright tagged eight books that "use established narratives, but approach them from unexpected angles, often violent ones." One title on the list:

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

In some ways, this novel reads like an extended denouement—we see the Darcys from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice settled in their marriage. Unlike most denouements, though, this one introduces a new conflict, i.e. a murder. Could it be that George Wickham is more than a notorious cad—is he also a cold-blooded killer? In her final book, P. D. James offers up a twisty investigation that will delight both Austen fans and her own.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Death Comes to Pemberley is among Ronald Frame's top ten reimagined classics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six major post-Roe books on abortion & American history

The staff at Publishers Weekly tagged six major post-Roe books on abortion and American history, including:

We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe by Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd

Married couple Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd (Dancing in Limbo) chronicle their decades-long careers offering abortion care in this fascinating memoir. Boyd was a small-town doctor in 1960s East Texas when he began performing illegal abortions for desperate patients in defiance of his strict Christian upbringing; Halvorson-Boyd, meanwhile, was studying psychology and participating in the budding women’s movement. The pair met shortly after Roe v. Wade, when Halvorson-Boyd worked as a surgical assistant at Boyd’s Dallas clinic, and they quickly bonded over their shared dedication to women’s health (“I am not pro-abortion,” Boyd writes, “I am pro-woman”). In alternating first-person sections, the couple traces key moments in their personal and professional lives, including their 1973 establishment of the first legal abortion facility in the American Southwest and the 2009 murder of their colleague, George Tiller, who pioneered late-term abortions. The most stirring sections focus on the women they’ve treated, including a 14-year-old pressured by her mother into seeking an abortion, which the couple refused to perform. With empathy and urgency to spare—the consequences of Roe v. Wade’s 2022 overturning (“This feels like a death,” Halvorson-Boyd recalls saying when the decision came through) are implicit on every page—this offers an invaluably intimate glimpse at a delicate subject. It’s a must-read.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about toxic student-teacher relationships

Lauren Aliza Green holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Great Dark House, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship, and the inaugural recipient of the Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award, sponsored by Poetry Ireland and Stanford University. Her writing has received support from the Kenyon Review Workshop, Bread Loaf, and the Carson McCullers Center.

Green's debut novel is The World After Alice.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite "touchstones of fiction that blur the line between mentorship and manipulation in fascinating yet toxic ways." One title on the list:

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

Florin’s debut follows Isabel, a college student at a liberal arts school in the Northeast. The book kicks off with Isabel’s sexual assault at the hands of a classmate. This event forms the backdrop for Isabel’s subsequent affair with her married professor, Connelly. Florin’s novel is equal parts coming-of-age story and retrospective, with Isabel looking back on her younger self and the choices she made.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about cults

Kate Robards is the author of two thriller novels. Her debut novel, The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard, was nominated for the 2024 Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award and received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Her second novel, Only the Guilty Survive, has just hit the booskstores.

[My Book, The Movie: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard; The Page 69 Test: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard; Q&A with Kate Robards]

Robards studied journalism and advertising at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Currently, she works in communications at a nonprofit organization.

When she isn’t writing her next book, Robards is spending time with her children, gardening, reading, or tackling a new sewing project. She lives outside Chicago with her family.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five books

shedding light on the spectrum of cult dynamics—from the seductive allure of communal living to the chilling influence of charismatic leaders. They explore the psychological mechanisms behind indoctrination, the haunting aftermath of cult experiences, and the enduring questions of guilt and blame that permeate such narratives.

One title on the list:

The Girls – Emma Cline

In The Girls, Evie Boyd, a bored 14-year-old in California, leaves home to join a cult reminiscent of Charles Manson’s “family.” Even if you’re largely unaware of the actions of Manson and his followers in the late sixties, you’d likely pick up on how closely the fictional storyline is modeled after the infamous group and its crimes. Emma Cline’s main character is a groundless teen plagued by adolescent problems, who is sucked into the orbit of Suzanne, an alluring member of a group of girls who worship an egomaniac leader named Russell and live at a ramshackle ranch. While Cline doesn’t recreate the actions of the Manson cult, the trajectory the story follows is reminiscent of reality, especially when the girls break into a home—the calling card of Manson’s followers. There’s even a famous rock musician offering Russell a record deal—a detail similar to the real-life connection between Manson and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. The story is narrated by middle-aged Evie in the present time, allowing the reader to grasp both the emotions of a vulnerable teen as she recalls the events and the perspective of someone who’s spent her life analyzing her role in the events that took place. While the story is very much linked to Manson and his family, it’s Cline’s vivid writing style that sets The Girls apart.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about classical music

Harriet Constable is a writer and filmmaker based in London. Her debut novel is The Instrumentalist. The book is inspired by the true story of Anna Maria della Pietà, who was an orphan, musical prodigy and student of Antonio Vivaldi. It has been named an Observer top 10 debut for 2024.

Constable’s journalism and documentary work is featured in outlets including The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, NPR, The Economist. She produced for BBC News at Six and Ten during the pandemic, and is a Rough Guide to Kenya co-author. She was part of the team that made the BAFTA-award winning 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room.

Originally from London, Constable worked at the Financial Times before spending several years in Nairobi and then Johannesburg. She grew up playing the flute and piano and singing with her mother, a classically trained musician.

At the Guardian Constable tagged five of the best books about classical music, including:

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

In Amsterdam, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday are two old friends who meet at the funeral of a mutual ex-lover and find their lives inextricably linked in the weeks that follow. Clive is a top composer and, for me, it’s in the descriptions of his work that this novel sings. A piece composed at the top of a cello’s range sounds like “some furious energy restrained”. A crescendo is compared to “a giant drawing breath”. And melody erupts “into a wave, a racing tsunami of sound”. It won McEwan the Booker prize in 1998.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the funniest crime novels ever written

Jamie Harrison has lived in Montana with her family for more than thirty-five years. She's worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor, and is the author of seven novels, including the Jules Clement series: The River View (August 2024) and four other novels set in the fictional town of Blue Deer, Montana: The Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and Blue Deer Thaw, all reissued in July 2024. The Center of Everything (2020) and the The Widow Nash (2017) share two key characters; The Widow Nash was awarded the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

At Electric Lit Harrison tagged seven books that "prove that wanting to kill someone can be funny." One title on the list:

Conviction by Denise Mina

Mina’s novels, including the Garnethill series, have all been excellent: closely observed and realistic, with a lot of crisps-eating and amused exhaustion in the midst of brutal death. I still remember my gradual surprise at the change of tenor of Conviction, which opens up with a housewife named Anna McLean listening to a true crime podcast over coffee about an exploding boat and quickly starts spinning like a whirligig: Anna is not Anna, Anna knows the owner of the boat, and Anna is avoiding the persistent knock on her front door for a reason. And off we go into a giddy, beautifully executed balancing act. There’s a wild sense of freedom to this book, and it leaves you happy as it snaps into a perfect ending.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven top Olympics books

Lindsay Powers is a book lover, writer (bylines include The New York Times and The Washington Post), and author of You Can’t F*ck Up Your Kids: A Judgment-Free Guide to Stress-Free Parenting.

When not devouring narrative nonfiction, fiction, memoirs, and essays, Powers can be found out and about in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and two young sons.

At the Amazon Book Review she and her colleagues tagged eleven Olympics books that deserve a gold medal, including:

Let the Games Begin by Rufaro Faith Mazarura

If you need a little romance to get into the Olympic mood, the Amazon Editors have you covered. Let the Games Begin is set at the fictional 2024 Athens Games—and is full of Olympic hopes, dreams, and romantic desire. I loved the feel of experiencing the Olympic Village through an Olympian’s eyes—the parties and excitement, but also the intensity and sometimes heartbreak. Focused and driven Olivia has a life-long dream to land an internship at (and eventually run) the Olympics, whereas the charming and charismatic Zeke, Great Britain’s track and field star, is striving for his first gold medal. The two initially meet in the Olympic Village, and continue to unexpectedly meet throughout the course of games. Chemistry starts to form at a time when both of their futures are on the line. Parental expectations, the paparazzi, and the overall pressures of success threaten to stop Olivia and Zeke short of their goals and possibly from each other. Let the Games Begin is a guaranteed primer for this year’s games.
—Kami Tei, Amazon Editor

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top uncanny domestic thrillers

Maia Chance is the author of the thriller The Body Next Door as well as ten mystery novels. Originally from northern Idaho, she has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in violin performance and a Ph.D. in English Literature. She lives on a bucolic island in Puget Sound with her husband, two children, and her dog.

At CrimeReads Chance writes:

I love how magic, ghosts, robots, and demons inject domestic thrillers with fresh imagination. I especially love how uncanny elements open up new ways to write about marriage, family, and home. I mean, any domestic thriller can explore the idea that, say, a baby or a mother-in-law is monstrous, but why not go there and make the baby or the mother-in-law an actual monster?

She tagged six favorite uncanny domestic thrillers. One title on the list:

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Sager’s The House Across the Lake also engages the voyeuristic set-up of the drunk woman who’s just a little too interested in the apparently perfect lives of her neighbors. When she enters their orbit by rescuing the wife from drowning, things take a turn. And then another turn. And another. And another. The series of twists in this book isn’t for the fainthearted, but I enjoyed how Sager dares to go all the way.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The House Across the Lake is among Alice Blanchard's five mysteries set in still waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven thrilling tales that upturn what we know about Black history

Susanna Ashton teaches at Clemson University in South Carolina. A former Fellow at both Yale and Harvard as well as a Fulbright scholar, her work has appeared in both scholarly and popular venues, usually chewing on ideas about paperwork, archives, and 19th-century freedoms. Her series on fugitivity and runaways can be found at The Runaway Chronicles.

Ashton is the author of A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

At Electric Lit Ashton tagged seven "books that model new ways to see Black history and American history, with all of its beauty and cruelty, afresh." One title on the list:

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

First off, props to such a compelling title. The Crafts’ story is well known to scholars, but Woo’s fresh retelling of their tale is riveting. Step by step, she tracks how Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved couple in Georgia whose union was not recognized by any court of law at that time, maneuvered one of the most audacious escapes imaginable. Light-skinned Ellen disguised herself as a genteel white man in poor health, traveling North for treatment with his dark-skinned slave—her husband, William, in disguise as her captive. Hiding in plain sight, the couple braved inquisitive hotel guests and pushy railway passengers. Ellen even put her arm in a sling to justify avoiding hotel desk registries—as she was illiterate and would have been found out when presented with a pen.

Once north in New England, the Crafts’ troubles were not over: they had to evade recapture and make their way to Canada, and eventually, now facing international celebrity status, they found an uneasy sanctuary in England. The Crafts’ ambitions were often at odds with the aims of the Anti-Slavery organizations and white patrons they were surrounded by. And sometimes, their wishes were not in concert with those of their activist friends, such as fellow fugitive William Wells Brown, who sought to keep them in the public eye even when they were hoping to settle down more quietly. But the couple held onto each other, and in an astonishing twist rarely seen in such life stories, they boldly chose to return to Georgia some years after the Civil War. Woo lets their story unfold in their own words at times, drawing from their memoirs and interviews. But she also builds out their story in the broader context and conversations around fugitivity and freedom. Taut and tense, Master Slave Husband Wife is a story of flipping gender, race, and power politics upside-down in the pursuit of freedom fueled by love.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue