Saturday, July 19, 2025

Eight titles about space that reimagine what it means to live on Earth

Daisy Atterbury is the author of The Kármán Line, a debut book of experimental prose and poetry described as "a new cosmology" (Lucy Lippard) and "a cerebral altar to the desert" (Raquel Gutiérrez). Their work investigates queer life and fantasies of space with an interest in unraveling colonial narratives in the American Southwest. They’ve published articles, interviews and poetry with The Paris Review, BOMB, Technikart, Makhzin, and Post45/Contemporaries.

At Electric Lit Atterbury tagged eight books that "remind us that another world is always possible, whether here, 'out there,' or somewhere between." One title on the list:
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

No list about space, power, and alternate possibilities would be complete without Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, which turned 50 last year. (Happy birthday!) If you, like me, were always meaning to read it, you may vaguely know that the book offers a vision of an anarchist moon society struggling against the gravitational pull of capitalism and excess. Le Guin’s twin planets, Urras and Anarres, extend state repression into space, where imperial logics go unchecked. But the novel’s profound counter-narrative centers in Anarres, the anarchist moon, which embodies a living experiment in mutual aid, collective decision-making, and freedom from private property. trust. Le Guin’s utopian worlds remain fragile and unfinished, forever vulnerable to bureaucratic rigidity and the pull of old hierarchies.

Unlike stories that glorify space colonization as progress, The Dispossessed insists that freedom must be continually reimagined, not exported like a commodity. For me, this book remains a stunning reminder that the social life of space can reproduce earthly politics and economics, or become a galvanizing point for solidarity beyond national (Earth) borders.
Read about the other entries on Atterbury's list at Electric Lit.

The Dispossessed is among Naomi Klein's six favorite books and Luke Rhinehart's five favorite sci-fi satires.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, July 18, 2025

Five books for the Effective Altruist

Ben Brooks is the author of books for children and adults, including The Greatest Possible Good and the million-copy series Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, both a Sunday Times (London) and New York Times bestseller, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages and received a British National Book Award. He received a Somerset Maugham Award and Jerwood Fiction Prize for his debut novel Lolito, and the Celsius 232 and Premio Torres del Agua for The Impossible Boy. He also writes for television and is developing original TV projects in the UK and Germany.

A Lit Hub Brooks tagged five books featuring people who decided to give away large amounts of money. One title on the list:
Ann Napolitano, Dear Edward

As the single survivor of a plane crash, twelve-year-old Edward will spend the rest of his life trying to make sense of the tragedy that spared him. When he receives a large amount of cash in compensation, he begins giving it away to the surviving relatives of crash victims. Here, giving money away becomes a way of seeking out meaning amidst the senseless luck of existence.
Read about the other books on Brooks's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Five essential titles for the Bigfoot-curious

Giano Cromley is the author of two indie YA novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University.

[Coffee with a Canine: Giano Cromley & Kaiya and Tanka; My Book, The Movie: The Last Good Halloween]

Originally from Billings, Montana, he graduated from Dartmouth College and received an MFA from the University of Montana. He has worked as a speech writer and deputy press secretary in Washington, DC, and he has taught GED and ESL classes in Chicago. He is currently an English professor at Kennedy-King College, where he is chair of the Communications Department. He is also an amateur woodworker and a certified wildlife tracker. He lives on the South Side of Chicago with his wife and two dogs.

Cromley's new novel is American Mythology.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "books to broaden your Sasquatch knowledge (whether you believe or not)." One title on the list:
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O’Connor

While researching his book, O’Connor participated in several Bigfoot expeditions in order to better understand the individuals who spend their lives looking for this mythical creature. The portraits of the people he encounters are sensitive and honest, capturing the fact that their fascinations may tell us more about ourselves as a country than we care to admit.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Twelve great LA books

David Gordon was born in New York City. His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It was also made into a major motion picture in Japan. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Purple, and Fence, among other publications.

[The Page 69 Test: The SerialistThe Page 69 Test: Mystery GirlThe Page 69 Test: White Tiger on Snow MountainWriters Read: David Gordon (August 2019); The Page 69 Test: The Hard Stuff; Q&A with David Gordon; The Page 69 Test: The Wild Life]

Gordon's new novel is Behind Sunset.

At The Strand Magazine he tagged twelve favorite Los Angeles books. One title on the list:
Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley

With this, the first case of Easy Rawlins, Mosely introduces an archetypal detective, and kicks off a retelling of post-war LA history as experienced by black Americans, refreshing and reimagining classic crime along the way.
Read about the other books on Gordon's list.

Devil in a Blue Dress is among Gabino Iglesias's fifty best mysteries of all time, Zach Vasquez's nine novels that explore secrecy & deception in racial identity, Peter Colt's eight books featuring unlikely detectives, E.G. Scott's ten best pairs of frenemies in fiction, Alex Segura's nine top jazz-infused crime novels, Lori Roy's five top morality-driven thrillers, and Al Roker's six favorite crime novels.

Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, from Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series, made The A.V. Club's list of “13 sidekicks who are cooler than their heroes.”

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Eight top age-gap relationship novels

Hattie Williams began pursuing a music career in her teens and toured Europe extensively, making three studio albums and working as a composer before finding her way to book publishing (quite by accident). She spent the next twelve years working with some of the biggest authors in the world, and she is the former producer of the Iceland Noir Literary Festival, which takes place in Reykjavík every November. Williams continues to feed her creativity through her writing from her home in East London, where she lives with her partner and daughter.

Williams's new novel is Bitter Sweet.

At Lit Hub she tagged eight of her favorite age gap relationship novels, including:
Louise Kennedy, Trespasses

This absolutely devastating novel set in Northern Ireland in 1975 follows the affair between young Cushla, and older, married British lawyer Micheal. Everything about this novel is perfect.

The prose, staccato and refined and ever so slightly detached, paints the setting so viscerally; every single character in the ensemble around these doomed lovers is multi-dimensional and written with such tenderness and understanding that they leap off the page and into your heart, where they will stay forever.

I read this book after I had written Bitter Sweet and honestly wanted to throw mine in the bin and move under a rock because it is that good. It made me a better writer just by reading it. The ending will destroy you, even if you know what’s coming.
Read about the other novels on Williams's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, July 14, 2025

Five of the best books to understand Middle Eastern Muslims

Donna Lee Bowen, Professor Emerita of Political Science and Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University, is co-editor of Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East.

At Shepherd she taggd five of the best books to understand Middle Easterners and their lives in the Muslim Middle East. One title on the list:
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

Over the past forty-plus years, the Middle East has seen more than its due of wars and chaos. Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist who currently writes for The Atlantic, writes in Black Wave of the impact throughout the Middle East of three heavy-duty events—the fall of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic, the attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca by a Saudi Arabian fundamentalist, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gives a sense of the why and the how behind the events she documents.

Ghattas tracks the impact of these events throughout Iran and Afghanistan but also in Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. She handles the sheer volume of material by focusing on the repression of regimes and the ideologies they represent as seen through the voices of novelists, journalists, intellectuals, and religious figures. Her account emphasizes issues often seen as marginal to the politics of the region, such as dialectical differences and actresses choosing to veil, but which, under examination, prove to be meaningful as dictators use social issues to keep their political pots boiling.

One of my favorite sections was the Pakistani woman news announcer who began her career as a top-notch star, then gradually lost freedom to dress as she chose, and then even to appear on air. I was also fascinated by an unconventional story of love and free speech. A well-known Egyptian literature professor’s life was upended by conservative Muslim scholars critical of his publications. In court, they won cases that declared that in looking at the origins of Islam through a critical eye, he was an apostate under Islamic law. They undermined his private life by ruling that—no longer considered a Muslim—he could no longer be married to his wife, a Muslim woman.

All of these stories help readers understand the everyday impact the increasing political Islamization had on Egyptians, Pakistanis, and other Middle Easterners.
Read about the other books on Bowen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Eight twisty crime thrillers

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged "eight crime thrillers with incredible twists that will have you guessing and holding your breath to the last page." One title on the list:
The Long Weekend by Gilly MacMillan

For folks who want a little bit more of a taste of White Lotus, here’s a twisty thriller for you. A group of couples have planned a weekend away in Dark Fell Barn, which is set far from everyone on a farm in Northumberland. The women arrive first before their husbands, but when they arrive, there’s a note. One of the woman’s husbands is dead. On top of that, there’s a storm that makes their isolation complete. None of the three women can reach out to their husbands, nor leave the retreat. All they have are their secrets which are all about to come how.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Long Weekend is among Lisa Unger's six best (or worst!) books to read in a secluded cabin in the woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Six top crime fiction canines

Dick Lochte is an award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of numerous crime novels, including The Talk Show Murders with Al Roker. He and his wife Jane live in Southern California with their dog Hoagy. Lochte's newest novel, with William M Webster IV, is Rockets' Red Glare.

At The Strand Magazine Lochte tagged six notable crime fiction canines, including:
ROBERT CRAIS’S MAGGIE

Crais’ main sleuth, Elvis Cole, essentially a younger West Coast version of Spenser, is more cat- than dog-lover, but in the novel, Suspect, another of the author’s protagonists, LAPD K-9 officer Scott James walks his beat with Maggie, a retired military German shepherd. She is suffering a canine version of PTSD caused by the death of her handler and her own wounds after a bombing attack in Afghanistan. Scott himself has not quite recovered from a devastating ambush by unidentified assailants who killed his human partner. Just as in Rockets’ Red Glare, after Sage and Peak are nearly killed by explosives left by the assassins, the bond between man and dog is more than mere companionship—it’s one of healing.

Crais writes some of the novel from Maggie’s point of view, displaying astonishing empathy while allowing readers into her memory-driven, sensory world. In this Maggie clearly is not just a sidekick or emotional support; she’s a protagonist. Though the crimes she helps solve are important, they’re secondary to the deeper story: two wounded souls rebuilding by trusting one another. (Further examples of novels that take readers into the minds of dogs include Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series, narrated by Chet the canine partner of Bernie the down-at-heels private eye, and several of Dean Koontz’s bestselling fantasies, including Watchers which features Einstein, a genetically altered golden retriever who understands human language and has near-human intelligence.)
Read about the other canines on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, July 11, 2025

Eighteen brilliantly transporting works of historical fiction

At Vogue Mia Barzilay Freund tagged eighteen "of the best historical fiction books of the last several decades," including:
Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

Brisk and engaging, this 2014 novel invites readers to the set of a popular sitcom in 1960s London. Hometown beauty queen Barbara Parker is plucked from obscurity and rebranded as Sophie Straw, the star of the BBC’s latest hit comedy. Hoping to channel her hero Lucille Ball, Sophie navigates newfound funny-girl fame with an amusing group: two bantering TV writers, an admiring producer, and a self-absorbed costar. With humor and sensitivity, Hornby brings out the color and chaos of TV comedy and the unusual people it throws together.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Funny Girl is among Brian Boone's five favorite literary crushes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Seven love triangle novels that are about more than romance

Lidija Hilje is a Croatian novelist and certified book coach. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and other outlets. After ten years of trying cases before Croatian courts, she obtained a book coaching certification and has been working professionally with writers ever since. She lives in Zadar, Croatia, with her husband and two daughters.

Slanting Towards the Sea is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Hilje tagged seven of her "favorite love triangles in literary fiction." One title on the list:
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

William Waters is a college student with a tragic past who meets and falls in love with Julia Padavano, a decisive and ambitious fellow student at Northwestern University. But Julia doesn’t come alone; she is one of four sisters, and a member of a tight-knit Italian family. While at first it seems like Julia’s drive and clear vision for the future are exactly what rudderless William needs, when tragedy strikes, it isn’t Julia who can understand him, but her younger—and closest—sister, Sylvie. The emergent love between William and Sylvie will spur an epic betrayal and cause a rift between sisters that will ripple through generations. Hello Beautiful explores the strength of three different kinds of bonds—sibling, romantic, and motherly––asking which is the strongest, and what happens when they’re stacked against one another.
Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

Hello Beautiful is among Morgan Dick's seven books about long-lost sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Six social thrillers that will make you question who you can trust

Anna Barrington has worked in galleries and auction houses in the art world for over five years. She received an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Originally from Atlanta, she currently lives in London, where she worked at a leading international art gallery.

The Spectacle is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Barrington tagged "six novels to remind us that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you." One title on the list:
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Korede is a nurse whose life centers around her mission to protect her beautiful sister Ayoolah. Who is Ayoolah? Along with being the favorite child, she’s also a serial killer with an unpleasant habit of murdering her boyfriends. This novel is set in Lagos, Nigeria, where Korede navigates torrential storms and traffic jams as she reluctantly helps her sister clean up the mess … Until Ayoolah’s eye falls on Tade, the kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works. This novel reads like a combination of American Psycho and Nip/Tuck, imagining a murderous response to the pressure on women to be beautiful and sexually appealing. But Braithwaite doesn’t press the point. She is most interested in the sisters’ relationship, which is complex and filled with realistically petty jealousies.
Read about the other novels on the list.

My Sister the Serial Killer is among Kate Alice Marshall's six great thrillers featuring sisters (and murder), Margot Douaihy's four novels that show the power of siblings in mysteries & thrillers, Francesca McDonnell Capossela's seven books about women committing acts of violence, Tessa Wegert's five thrillers about killer relatives, Catherine Ryan Howard's five notable dangers-of-dating thrillers, Sally Hepworth's top five novels about twisted sisters, Megan Nolan's six books on unrequited love and unmet obsession, Sarah Pinborough's top ten titles where the setting is a character, Tiffany Tsao's top five novels about murder all in the family, Victoria Helen Stone's eight top crime books of deep, dark family lore, and Kristen Roupenian's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Seven books about women doing dirty jobs

Kelly Ramsey was born in Frankfort, Kentucky. She studied poetry writing at the University of Virginia and earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She co-founded The Lighthouse Works, an artists’ residency program on Fishers Island, New York, and later moved to Northern California, where she worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a trail maintenance worker, wilderness ranger, and wildland firefighter on a hotshot crew. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Sierra, Electric Literature, Catapult, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger. She loves creeks, lakes, coffee, the ocean, punishing hikes, diner breakfasts, getting too much sun, and plants—even if their care remains a mystery. She lives in Redding, California, with her partner, their daughter, and their dog, a lab mix who won’t swim named Rookie.

Ramsey's new book is Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books
about ladies who work hard in mysterious, misunderstood industries. They suffer and struggle and can’t find anywhere to pee. Sometimes they’re victimized. And yet, in each of these stories, the women grow stronger than they ever imagined. Their books are about finding strength, resilience, joy, belonging, and so much more in the grittiest, most “masculine” workplaces.
One title on the list:
Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood by Hilary Peach

I have to admit straightaway that, before reading Thick Skin, I didn’t know exactly what a boilermaker was, but I knew it sounded tough as hell. A boilermaker is a construction welder, which, as Peach’s book humbly demonstrates, is an entirely badass and rather terrifying job (picture being lowered in a basket with a crane to weld a plate onto the side of a massive cruise ship). In this memoir of episodic stories, Peach tracks her many assignments and the progression of her skills as a welder in Canada—where she was based—and on assignment in the U.S. While misogyny is rampant in the male-dominated field of boilermaking, Peach’s approach is even-handed: she shows villains who tell her to “go home” alongside lovable mentors, allowing her male colleagues to be as human as herself. Peach, also a poet, writes beautifully (and humorously too!). I love this one and it deserves more attention than it has thus far received.
Read about the other books on Ramsey's list at Electric lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, July 7, 2025

The best political nonfiction books ever

For Esquire Charles P. Pierce tagged fifteen of the best political nonfiction books ever, including:
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson

Before Being Hunter ate him alive. Some of the most honest, scabrous, and, dammit, beautiful writing ever on how we govern ourselves.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is among the books that made a difference to John Cusack.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Five laugh-out-loud mysteries

Jo Firestone is a comedian and writer best known for her work on After Midnight with Taylor Tomlinson, ZIWE, and Joe Pera Talks With You. You can watch her most recent comedy special, Good Timing, currently streaming on Peacock. She can be heard hosting the long-running podcast, Dr. Gameshow, with comedian Manolo Moreno. She is also the co-author of two card games: Punderdome: A Card Game for Pun Lovers and Fruits.

Her debut murder mystery novel is Murder on Sex Island.

At CrimeReads Firestone tagged five favorite laugh-out-loud mysteries, including:
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

This book is about a dysfunctional family of private investigators, with 28-year-old Izzy at the helm. Izzy is a mess and so is her family, but the stories about them are charming. They’re such good private investigators, they are constantly tailing and wiretapping each other. It’s a cozy and quick read.
Read about the other titles on Firestone's list.

The Spellman Files is among Dahlia Adler's five books for Veronica Mars fans.

The Page 99 Test: The Spellman Files.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Five novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles

Ruth F. Stevens likes to create stories that will make readers laugh and cry. A former public relations executive in New York and Los Angeles, she is a produced playwright and author of the novels Stage Seven, My Year of Casual Acquaintances, and The Unexpected Guests. Stevens is a proud member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and the Dramatists Guild of America and serves as a volunteer and acquisitions editor for AlzAuthors. She lives in Torrance, California, with her husband. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, hiking, hip-hop and fitness classes, yoga, Broadway musicals, wine tasting, leading a book club, and visiting her grandsons in NYC.

At Shepherd Stevens tagged five of the best novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles. One title on the list:
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

This book contained everything I love in a novel: a sympathetic and unforgettable hero and a story that’s funny, original, and often surprising.

Elizabeth Zott is a beautiful woman and a gifted scientist, and I could feel her frustration as she tried to compete in the male-dominated professional world of the early 1960s. I cheered her on when she met her soulmate, fellow researcher Calvin, and abandoned her lonely existence.

When Elizabeth later ended up hosting a popular TV cooking show, where she taught her female fans how to break out of the stereotypical housewife rut to become modern women, I cheered even louder at her bold defiance of the status quo.
Read about the other entries on Stevens's list.

Lessons in Chemistry is among Lorna Graham's seven top workplace novels and Claire Alexander's five books to read for when you’re lonely.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, July 4, 2025

Six top Greek mythology retellings

John Wiswell is a disabled author who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His fiction has been translated into 10 languages. He won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Short Story for "Open House on Haunted Hill," and the 2022 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "That Story Isn't The Story." He has also been a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards.

Wiswell's new novel is Wearing the Lion.

At People magazine he tagged six Greek mythology retellings, including:
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

Achilles is one of the great heroes of retellings, both ridiculously popular and ever inconsistent across iterations. Some myths cast him as invincible except for a weak spot on his heel, yet in the most famous work he appears in, Homer’s Iliad, he is so not-invincible that the gods make sure he gets the right armor and shield. He is a figure with a million angles. Most recently, audiences fell in love with Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles, a tender gay romance that focused on Achilles and his fellow soldier Patroclus.

If you hunger for another LGBTQ+ take on Achilles, you need Wrath Goddess Sing in your life. It springs from the ancient story of Achilles passing as a woman in the court of King Skyros, and Deane explodes that idea to speculate that Achilles was a trans woman. She is hardly the only queer figure in the era of the Trojan War, but this Achilles has a unique path through the treacherous relationships of kings and warriors.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see 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

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world

Barnaby Martin is a multi-talented storyteller and creator. Besides his writing, he is an award-winning and self-taught composer, video essayist and teacher. His music has been performed widely in the UK and internationally by groups including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North and Westminster Cathedral Choir. His YouTube channel, Listening In, which he began in 2019 and for which he makes videos that explore the cross-section between pop culture and classical music, has garnered over 200,000 subscribers and ten million views. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and now teaches in London, where he lives with his husband.

Martin's new novel is The Quiet.

At CrimeReads he tagged seven "novels where a parent, or surrogate parent, just wants to save their child from the end of the world." One title on the list:
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Station Eleven doesn’t directly feature a parent-child relationship, but it has all the hallmarks of it. Kirsten, who is eight when the Georgia Flu appears, saw actor and movie star Arthur Leander as a father figure. And Jeevan, who is with Kirsten on the night of the outbreak, looks after her as a parent would following the collapse of civilization.
Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

Station Eleven is among Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Fourteen top essay collections

At GQ (UK edition) Josiah Gogarty tagged the "best essay collections for proving how amazingly well-read you are." One title on the list:
Feel Free by Zadie Smith

For all Zadie Smith’s talents and successes as a novelist, some in the literary world think her real strength is non-fiction. They have a strong case: Feel Free, Smith’s second essay collection, is full of superb writing. She’s razor-sharp at times, but also unafraid to confess genuine love and admiration for the subject at hand. The book and exhibition reviews are deft, but the highlights come with weirder subjects: a meditation on joy, in relation to ecstasy and British rave culture, and an improbable but brilliant comparison between Justin Bieber and the philosopher Martin Buber.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

Her latest novel is There'll Be Shell to Pay.

[My Book, The Movie: Plaid and PlagiarismThe Page 69 Test: Plaid and PlagiarismThe Page 69 Test: Scones and ScoundrelsMy Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels
The Page 69 Test: Crewel and UnusualThe Page 69 Test: Heather and HomicideQ&A with Molly MacRaeWriters Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024)The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High WaterMy Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water]

At CrimeReads MacRae tagged a few favorite amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs, including:
Gloria Lamerino, protagonist in the Periodical Tables Mysteries by Camille Minichino, is a former Berkeley physics professor. Gloria left California for her hometown, Revere, Massachusetts, and now works part-time as a science consultant for the Revere police department. Her former and current jobs are offbeat only because so many cozy mysteries feature crafters, cooks, café owners, and the like. Gloria is fifty-six, turning gray, and thinks of herself as amply proportioned. She has brains and hips. She uses her science background and everything she absorbed from the dynamics and traditions of her Italian family to help her solve murders in her own well-mannered way. There’s something else offbeat about her—she doesn’t live in a quaint or cute cottage and she hasn’t inherited an inn or B&B. She lives in an apartment above a friend’s funeral home. These are intelligent, well-written, tightly-paced mysteries with appealing, sympathetic characters and a real Boston feel. There are eight books in the series and several short stories.
Read about the other entries on MacRae's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, June 30, 2025

Four horror books for the Fourth of July

At Book Riot Emily Martin tagged "four horror novels to get you in the mood for the 4th of July this year (…or not)." One title on the list:
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

This alternative history horror novel imagines the KKK as literal demons. The release of the film Birth of a Nation in 1915 spread hatred across America and spawned hellish members of the Klan who planned to proliferate violence wherever they went. The only ones who can stop them are Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters. But the Klan has plans for Macon, Georgia, and Maryse and her demon-hunters will have to resist them with everything they’ve got.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Eight mysteries and thrillers starring older sleuths and criminals

Sue Hincenbergs is a former television producer who has worked on multiple award-winning programs. She lives in Toronto with her (very much alive) husband, her scruffy, middle-aged rescue dog, Kramer, and the rooms full of the stuff her three sons left behind when they moved out. The porch light is always on in case one comes by for a visit.

The Retirement Plan is her first novel.

At People magazine Hincenbergs tagged eight mysteries and thrillers "that prove that age really can be just a number — for both those seeking to solve the crime and the ones committing it." One title on the list:
Too Old for This by Samantha Downing

Seventy-five-year-old retired serial killer Lottie Jones is forced back into action when an investigative reporter comes for a visit and asks too many questions. Technological advances since she was last disposing of bodies require some navigation in a story that has a bit of bingo and a bit of blood with a dash of church drama and family dysfunction.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, June 28, 2025

Nine London-set historical mysteries

Julia Seales is a novelist and screenwriter. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University. She is a lifelong Anglophile with a passion for both murder mysteries and Jane Austen. Seales is originally from Kentucky, where she learned about manners (and bourbon).

Her new novel is A Terribly Nasty Business.

At CrimeReads Seales tagged nine "fantastic London-set historical mysteries ... which wonderfully showcase the fictional detectives who populate the City of Mystery." One title on the list:
Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

Lady Julia Grey’s husband Sir Edward drops dead in their London home, murdered – and thus begins the Lady Julia Grey mystery series. Set in the Victorian era against the backdrop of London society, this is a lush showcase of the city. And once you’ve read all of Julia Grey, you can move to Veronica Speedwell, the detective in Raybourn’s other fantastic, London-set mystery series.
Read about the other titles on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, June 27, 2025

Twenty authors' summer reading

The Guardian asked twenty authors (including Anne Enright, Rutger Bregman, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith, and Colm Tóibín) about their summer reading.

Bernardine Evaristo's contribution to the survey:
No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald is one of the best debut novels I’ve read in recent years. A family of women, mother, daughter and granddaughter, carry unresolved and unspoken trauma that’s passed down through the generations. This poisons their relationships and ability to fully function in society. Intense, visceral and beautifully written, McDonald’s novel captures their damaged souls. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is the follow-up to her bestselling novel Detransition, Baby. Consisting of three short stories and a novella, this is adventurous, mind-expanding and provocative fiction that skilfully serves up different possibilities of gender and sexuality.
Read about the other recommended books at The Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Nine stories and folktales featuring sisters

Fran Littlewood is the author of Amazing Grace Adams, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and a #ReadWithJenna book club pick. She has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. Before her MA, she worked as a journalist, including a stint at the Times. She lives in London with her husband and their three daughters.

Littlewood's new novel is The Accidental Favorite.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine favorite stories and folktales featuring sisters. One title on the list:
Hannah Pittard, We Are Too Many: A Memoir (Kind of)

Described as “A Memoir (kind of),” this genius, genre-defying book blurs fact with fiction to brilliantly explosive and quietly devastating effect. A reconstruction of the breakdown of the author’s marriage, following her husband’s affair with her best friend, Pittard fills in the blanks creatively—detailing calls and meetings between the two, as she imagines they might have happened.

But it’s the Fleabag-esque relationship between the author and her sister, that’s a breakout star of the book for me. In caustic exchanges, which pulse with unconditional love, the sisters riff on everything from a lacklustre suicide attempt to their grandpa’s porn stash, usually both validating and invalidating one another in a single pitch-perfect encounter. Raw, irreverent and funny as hell, this is a slim volume that punches powerfully.
Read about the other entries on the list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Five top literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts

Dwyer Murphy is the author of An Honest Living and The Stolen Coast, both of which were New York Times Editors’ Choice selections. He is the editor in chief of Literary Hub‘s CrimeReads vertical.

Murphy's new book is The House on Buzzards Bay.

At CrimeReads he tagged five favorite literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts, including:
Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park

Carter’s 1993 novel tells the story of the Garland family through the eyes of Talcott Garland, a Yale Law professor reckoning with scandal and regret in the wake of his father’s death. The paterfamilias was Judge Oliver Garland, a DC power player once snubbed on the cusp of an appointment to the Supreme Court. Upon the Judge’s death, his son finds himself caught up in a sprawling conspiracy of former spies and politicos, and the action soon shifts to the family’s summer haunts on Martha’s Vineyard. Carter paints a lively scene on the island and off, moving through rarefied circles of African-American power and community. And Carter is a dedicated stylist, too, with a voice that presumes a level of sophistication in its readers you rarely find in thrillers today. It makes for a highly enjoyable and deeply satisfying novel that resonates all the more on a second reading.
Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Eight novels that capture the drama and intrigue of filmmaking

Joanna Howard is the author of the novel Porthole (2025) and the memoir Rerun Era (2019). Other works include Foreign Correspondent (2013), On the Winding Stair (2009), and In the Colorless Round, a prose collaboration with artist Rikki Ducornet (2006). She co-wrote Field Glass, a speculative novel, with Joanna Ruocco (2017). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Verse, Bomb, and parts elsewhere. She lives in Denver and Providence and teaches at University of Denver.

At Electric Lit Howard tagged eight novels that "offer some compelling explorations of the drama and intrigue of filmmaking." One title on the list:
Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta

Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others centers a pair of female filmmakers, Meadow and Carrie, whose long-standing friendship must endure the pressure-cooker of corporatized filmmaking as they grow into their very different film careers. Peppered with film history and the anxiety of influence—Orson Welles looms large—the book uses formal experimentation in the flavor of cinematic montage to mimic the technological immersion of modern filmmaking, and the fragmented modes of composition and communication it demands. Spiotta challenges any simple, singular category of woman-as-artist and maker, highlighting nuanced differences in aesthetic, ideology, and methodology for the two friends, and a difference in their feminisms, and strategies for navigating the male-dominated industry.
Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

Innocents and Others is among Rachel Kushner’s ten favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, June 23, 2025

Seven books about our passion & need for reading

Donna Seaman is the adult books editor at Booklist, a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, and a recipient of the Louis Shore Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Seaman has written for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She has been a writer-in-residence for Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Seaman created the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness, her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books, and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.

Seaman's latest book is River of Books: A Life in Reading.

At Lit Hub she tagged seven books in which "writers ardently and incisively attest to how books save and sustain them, elucidating our profound need for books and affirming the need for us to defend our right to read and write freely." One title on the list:
Glory Edim, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

Many of us say that books have saved us by providing perspective, companionship, and sanctuary, but the predicaments Edim needed help navigating were exceptionally difficult. The firstborn child of immigrants from Nigeria, Edim was five when her brother, Maurice, was born; she was eight when their parents divorced and her mother, a former teacher who taught a very young Edim to read, began working long shifts as a nurse, leaving Edim to care for her brother. The siblings reveled in the weekends spent with their father until he abruptly disappeared. Worse yet was her mother’s doomed second marriage which left Edim responsible for Maurice and a new baby brother. Not even college brought relief when her long-traumatized mother needed care.

From the start, Edim read hungrily, searchingly, steeping herself in “survival stories.” She found comfort in Little Women, as have so many book-loving girls and future writers, and inspiration in Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a novel about a ten-year-old Black girl in Mississippi during the Great Depression. Edim loved both books because, like her, their young female characters “were struggling, they had burdens and responsibilities beyond their years, and they still found a way to be emotionally fulfilled. They found a way out of the danger that surrounded them.” The more demanding her life became, the more urgently and astutely Edim read, finding her way to the wisdom and artistry of Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison. Ultimately her ardor for and abiding faith in literature, especially writing by Black women poets and writers, inspired her to found Well-Read Black Girl, an innovative, impactful, and award-winning nonprofit literary organization.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Nine great mystery and thriller novels set at sea

Sian Gilbert was born in Bristol, UK. She studied history at the University of Warwick, before teaching at a comprehensive school in Birmingham for almost five years. She now lives in Cambridge with her partner.

Gilbert's new novel is I Did Warn Her.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine novels that
explore the different ways setting a book at sea can impact characters and plot, from the inherent dangers of sailing, to being stranded, to what happens when the boat sinks and relationships are tested. The protagonists often have an offer they can’t refuse, a desire to taste a life so different from their own, and this leads to fatal consequences.
One title on the list:
The Last Passenger by Will Dean

Dean describes stepping onto a boat as “an act of faith”. This sentiment feels more common when considering something like flying—plenty of people are afraid of that, even those that fly often. There’s an implicit fear difficult to shake, and you truly feel dependent on the pilots and crew. Really, there should be a similar sentiment just as the main character describes when on a ship. If something goes wrong, you cannot outswim the ocean. The captain is everything. Which is why, when Caroline wakes up aboard the Atlantica and finds herself entirely alone, it is a worst nightmare come true. Her boyfriend is gone, her phone has no reception, and the crew have vanished. There are only a small number of other passengers who seem equally as confused about what’s going on. This book strips back life on board a vessel and shows the amount of work that goes into simply staying alive, which becomes ever more important in the game of survival that develops.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue