Seven books that show Pittsburgh is a perfect backdrop for drama

Anna Bruno is the author of Fine Young People and Ordinary Hazards. She teaches at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Previously, Bruno managed public relations and marketing for technology and financial services companies in Silicon Valley. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MBA from Cornell University, and a BA from Stanford University. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, two sons, and blue heeler.

At Electric Lit Bruno tagged "seven books that show Pittsburgh is the best place to come of age—at any age." One title on the list:

Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan

Somehow Stewart O’Nan managed to burrow deeply into the psyche of an old lady for Emily, Alone. There is no character in fiction who feels more real than Emily Maxwell. She reads the newspaper, cleans before the housekeeper arrives, and waits impatiently for thank you notes from her grandchildren.

As Emily traverses Pittsburgh in her cobalt-blue Subaru Outback, I found myself on Google maps, tracing her routes around my hometown. Her journey ends when she leaves the city to visit the rural Pennsylvania outpost where she grew up. There, she finds the house of her childhood, restored to its original white with forest-green shutters, and her mother’s hydrangeas in full bloom. For the first time, she doesn’t wish to distance herself from the child she once was, proving that nobody is ever too old to come of age. Fortunately, Emily will be back this fall in O’Nan’s newest book, Evensong.

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

Emily, Alone is among Ben Schrank's six notable books on love, betrayal, and creative people who behave badly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thriller novels that grab you from page one

Ryan Pote is a twelve-year veteran Navy helicopter pilot who was part of a joint interagency special operations task force, deployed throughout Central and South America conducting counter narcotics. Before the Navy, he was a scuba diving instructor in Hawaii and a lab tech conducting algae-biofuels research. He holds a Masters degree in History from Ashland University. He lives with his wife and children in New England.

Pote's new novel is Blood and Treasure.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five thriller novels that grab you from page one. One title on the list:

Killing Floor by Lee Child

Jack Reacher, a drifter with no baggage, steps off a bus in a sleepy Georgia town and gets arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, sparking a brutal fight for survival.

Lee Child’s Killing Floor is like a punch you didn’t see coming. Reacher’s a towering, no-nonsense ex-military cop who walks into trouble like it’s his day job, and from the first page, you’re strapped in for a gritty, twisty ride. This is the kind of book that makes you miss your beach umbrella’s shade because you’re too busy flipping pages.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Killing Floor is among the Telegraph's twenty-three greatest thrillers ever written.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen top feminist books

Emma Specter is the Culture Writer at Vogue, where she covers film, TV, books, politics, news and (almost) anything queer. She has previously worked at GARAGE and LAist and has freelanced for outlets including The Hairpin, Bon Appetit, them, the Hollywood Reporter and more. Her first book is More Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing and the Lust for ‘Enough’.

Specter lives in Los Angeles. In her spare time, she shops for vintage purses and bakes a lot of bagels.

For Vogue she and her colleagues tagged thirteen feminist books that deserve a place on your nightstand. One title on the list:

Love Is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar (2021)

Driving cross-country solo is potentially one of the most empowering things a woman can do, and Jarrar gives a new and distinctive voice to the experience in this memoir about traversing America as a queer, Muslim, Palestinian Egyptian feminist determined to chart the course of her own story.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten "Murderbot" read-alikes with just enough existential dread

At B&N Reads Margarita Polkowska tagged ten "Murderbot read-alikes with just enough existential dread." One title on the list:

Annihilation Aria: Book One of the Space Operas by Michael R. Underwood

A space opera that actually sings, this a fun albeit high-stakes adventure you don’t want to miss out on. It’s an action-packed, heartfelt romp through a highly-controlled galaxy where knowledge is forbidden and songs are — weapons.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books featuring cults

Lauren Wilson has a degree in Journalism and an MA in Creative Writing, both from Northumbria University. She has previously worked as a freelance radio reporter, set up her own content writing and social media management business, and she currently works for Mslexia, a magazine committed to championing women’s writing.

The Goldens is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Wilson tagged her eight favorite books featuring cults. One title on the list:

The Project – Courtney Summers

In this dark and striking YA thriller, journalist Lo is determined to track down her older sister, Bea, who joined a group called The Unity Project after their parents were killed in a car accident. Lo is determined to both expose The Project for what she believes it really is – a sinister cult led by a charismatic leader – and save her sister at any cost. Told from the perspectives of both Lo and Bea, this is a hard-hitting read that explores both family and cult dynamics.

Read about the other books on Wilson's list at CrimeReads.

Also see Lisa Black's five books about cults, Kate Robards's five essential books about cults, Janice Hallett's five top books on cults, Melanie Abrams's seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, & other alternative communities, Joanna Hershon's seven darkly fascinating books about cults, Claire McGlasson's top ten books about cults, and Sam Jordison's top ten books on cults and religious extremists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels about class & racial tensions in the suburbs

Kate Broad holds a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a Bronx Council on the Arts award winner for fiction, and her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, No Tokens, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere.

Greenwich is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Broad tagged eight "novels about class and racial tensions in the American suburbs, each of them engrossing and unsettling, concerned with the powerful forces that shape a community. These are books about belonging, about insiders and outsiders, that ask how far we’ll go and how much we’ll risk in pursuit of the good life."

One title on the list:

Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

New to suburban Long Island, Brooklyn transplant Gertie Wilde thinks she’s finally found an idyllic home for her family on Maple Street, especially thanks to her new friend and neighbor Rhea Schroeder. But when a sinkhole opens in the neighborhood and Rhea’s daughter falls in, Rhea turns against the Wildes in a frantic effort to protect her own reputation and find an easy target to blame. She hurls vicious accusations against Gertie’s husband, and things quickly escalate into a frenzied neighborhood witch hunt. Maple Street is majority white, and it’s clear the one Indian American family on the block had better get in line. But class in this novel is as much of a marker of outsider status as race, and the consequences for anyone who doesn’t fit in and follow the rules can be deadly.

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

Good Neighbors is among Katrina Monroe's nine terrible mothers in horror, Chris Cander's eight novels about dealing with difficult neighbors, and Amelia Kahaney's six top coming-of-age mysteries & thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: Good Neighbors.

My Book, The Movie: Good Neighbors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Civil War historical fiction titles

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five "Civil War historical fiction books [that] provide some insight into what it was like for people at the time—to choose sides, to unlearn their own prejudices and misconceptions, and to question everything about what it means to be an American." One entry on the list:

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

When two brothers seek refuge on a farm in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, they kindle an unexpected friendship with the couple who take them in. The brothers save up money in the hopes of going North to reunite with their mother, even as they bring comfort to the grieving couple who lost their only son in the war. A pair of Confederate soldiers, meanwhile, take their tryst to the local woods. When their forbidden romance is discovered, the chaos and repercussions unleashed rock the entire community to its core.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that feature toxic friendships

Christina Dotson is an Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award runner-up. In addition to writing, she is a licensed clinical social worker for a palliative care practice and lives in Kentucky.

Dotson's new novel is Love You To Death.

At CrimeReads she tagged "five books guaranteed to give you the toxic friendship vibes we love to see." One title on the list:

Jesse Q. Sutanto, I’m Not Done with You Yet

Competition, jealousy, obsession, and betrayal fuel this story of two toxic friends, Jane and Thalia, who meet in college and whose lives take very different paths after the duo lose touch. For Jane, life is a series of mundane events, including her marriage and career.

When she discovers Thalia on The New York Times bestseller list, Jane is determined to reunite with her former bestie and pick up where they left off, but this may not be the reunion either of them expects. Sometimes, reliving the past can have deadly consequences.

Read about the other entries on Dotson's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels set in realistic but imaginary places

Dan Fesperman served as a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, based in Berlin. His coverage of the siege of Sarajevo led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel.

Fesperman's new novel is Pariah.

At Lit Hub he tagged five favorite novels "set in seemingly realistic locations that exist in the here and now, and often within real continents and regions." One title on the list:

Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan

This satirical romp from 2006 has everything you’d want in a novel set in an imaginary former Soviet Republic. Its unforgettable hero is the obese manchild, Misha Vainberg, son of a murdered Russian oligarch. Vainberg, by using a fake passport, has taken refuge in Absurdsvanï—aka Absurdistan—which is being torn asunder in its post-Soviet rebirth by a clash of Slavic ethnic groups, the Sevo and the Svanï.

The basis of their conflict? A dispute over which direction the footrest of the Orthodox cross should be tilted.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Feral girl summer reading list

Beth Kanter is a writer with more than 20 years of experience working for national magazines and newspapers. Her essays, features, humor pieces, and reported stories have appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Paste, The Writer, Shape, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Business Insider, Parents, Kveller, and Curbed.

At Provoked by Susan, Kanter tagged nine "loud, messy, sexy, wild, and unhinged ... books [that] tingle in all the right places: the brain, the body, and the memory." One title on the list:

Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

Just in time for the stickiest days of summer, Seduction Theory comes out on August 12. The novel boasts a tantalizing premise: A creative writing graduate student’s thesis project “fictionally” outs the web of infidelity in the department. Smart and steamy, this one will keep you delightfully hot and bothered into the back-to-school season.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top thrillers about influencers and the world of influencing

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged eight "compelling, sometimes ripped-from-the-headlines thrillers about influencers and the world of influencing." One title on the list:

Kismet by Amina Akhtar

Ronnie Khan has taken a big leap. Fleeing her life with the abusive aunt who raised her, she decides to move across the country to Sedona, Arizona, with a woman she just met: Marley Dewhurst. Marley wants nothing more than to be the next wellness influencer and will do anything to achieve it. In the land of Sedona, they find a like minded community focused on wellness. But they soon learn that someone is more than just unhappy about the wellness community there; they are murdering influencers in terrible ways. Will Marley and Ronnie find themselves in the crosshairs of this killer?

Read about the other titles on the list.

Kismet is among Rachel Koller Croft's eight top thrillers in which the characters actually get to have fun, Jamie Lee Sogn's eight top mysteries & thrillers set in the wellness industry, Molly Odintz's twelve wacky, weird, and wildly entertaining mysteries & thrillers and Meredith Hambrock's five recent crime novels featuring messy female characters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four novels that twist the slasher model into something darker and more personal

Daphne Woolsoncroft is a thriller author and podcaster drawn to the shadowy corners of human nature. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she found her creative pulse deepened by the mist-laced forests and rain-slicked streets of Oregon, where she lived for several years. She is the co-host of the acclaimed true crime podcast Going West, which she created with her husband, Heath Merryman, in 2019.

When she’s not chasing down stories of the strange and sinister, Woolsoncroft can be found sinking into films at the cinema or curled up on the couch of her California home with a good book -preferably a literary classic or terrifying modern horror- alongside her loyal English bulldog, Dewey.

Her debut thriller is Night Watcher.

At CrimeReads Woolsoncroft tagged four novels "that echo themes of surveillance, female resilience, and the fixation on catching the ones who lurk in the margins." One title on the list:

The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene

A long-dormant secret resurfaces when human remains are uncovered from Doll’s Eye Lake, reopening a case tied to four young women who went missing 24 years earlier. Lindsey, whose sister vanished all those years ago, has been tormented by Jessica’s mysterious case, and, alongside attractive journalist Ryan, is determined to get to the bottom of it – even if it means going to the bottom of the lake.

The story alternates between timelines, moving from the present-day investigation and the gripping retellings of what exactly happened in 1998 – making you eager to unbury all of Mt. Randall’s secrets.

Like Night Watcher, this novel is rooted in female intuition, crucially forcing their protagonist’s to confront the dark past before it swallows someone else whole.

Read about the other entries on Woolsoncroft's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

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

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

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

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 Serialist; The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl; The Page 69 Test: White Tiger on Snow Mountain; Writers 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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