Seven top books featuring bogs

Anna North is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.

North's latest novel is Bog Queen.

[The Page 69 Test: The Life and Death of Sophie Stark; The Page 69 Test: Outlawed; Q&A with Anna North]

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "books [that] will satisfy your bog witch cravings, while also reminding you of the real-world importance of bogs as bulwarks against climate change, cradles of biodiversity, and keepers of ancestral memory." One title on the list:

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister

An eerie fable that seems to take place across and outside of time, The Bog Wife is already a classic of the modern bog-core genre. This story of a West Virginia family with a very unusual tradition has notes of Edward Gorey and Rebecca, but Chronister creates a world all her own, its mossy darkness illuminated by flashes of humor.

Read about the other entries on North's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five campus mystery novels

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged five titles that "provide the perfect backdrop for diving headfirst into research in musty libraries and sorting through the clues," including:

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

I read this book back during the doldrums of 2020, and it broke my anxiety-induced reading slump, so I still highly recommend it. A secretive institution called Catherine House only takes and produces the best of the best. When Ines arrives, she expects rigorous academia, but gets a much more exploratory, experimental, hippie-ish education. The longer Indes spends there, the darker the school becomes.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five horror novels set in the art world

Faith Gladwin grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, and studied Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She now works at a museum, and in between research work and writing, she tries to keep her houseplants alive and safe from her cat, Cleo. She is the author of The Finalist.

At CrimeReads Gladwin tagged "five chilling novels set in the world of the arts, from theatre to isolated artistic retreats." One title on the list:

Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

From the past to the cutting-edge future of art, Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception follows two women in art school, caught in an obsessive, toxic friendship, as the public release of a tool that generates AI art instantly throws the scene into chaos. Mathilde is marked as a prodigy while Enka is struggling to keep up with her. In a drastic move, Enka throws herself into a new technology that allows the user to inhabit another person’s mind and absorb their emotions and memories, kicking off a twisted, addictive downward spiral between Enka and Mathilde.

Psychological and speculative, Immaculate Conception covers everything from trauma, the intersections of technology, capitalism, and art, to the way generative AI erodes creativity and community. It’s a sci-fi dystopian horror that’s only becoming more timely.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top speculative thrillers

At Book Riot Rey Rowland tagged six must-read speculative thrillers, including:

Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood

Moving on to another sci-fi, this one is set in a dark cyberpunk future. Bang Bang Bodhisattva follows Kiera, who takes on any job she can find just to survive. Things take a turn when the person she was looking for is found murdered. The killer left behind a stick of incense and nothing else.

When her crush goes missing and another stick of incense is found at the scene, Kiera is blamed for both crimes. Her only chance to clear her name is to work with Angel Herrera, a private investigator. From here, the story becomes a buddy comedy that you won’t be able to put down!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine suspense titles with unforgettable settings

Hallie Shepherd is a screenwriter, actor, and producer. She is a Pacific Northwest native who now lives in LA with her filmmaker husband.

Call Off the Dark is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "nine suspense novels with unforgettable settings." One title on the list:

Attica Locke, The Cutting Season

The story takes place at Belle Vie, a fictional antebellum sugar plantation in rural southern Louisiana. When a female migrant worker is found dead at the edge of the property, Belle Vie’s Black manager is drawn into the plantation’s history of slavery and her own family’s connection to the land.

The inspiration behind the setting comes from a real place: Oak Alley. The author attended a wedding there and describes feeling a mix of rage and revulsion as well as longing and love toward the pre-Civil War landmark. I visited Oak Alley myself during a 2007 trip to New Orleans, and I can see how it inspired such a beautiful but deeply unsettling place for the story.

Locke’s prose draws you into the lush, dreamy landscape, with its terrible history pulsing beneath the surface.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Cutting Season is among Stacy Willingham's eight top mysteries with southern swampy settings, Karen Dietrich's eight top red herrings in contemporary crime literature, T. Marie Vandelly's top ten suspenseful horror novels featuring housebound terrors and Wil Medearis's seven favorite novels that explore real estate swindles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that foresaw our digital lives

At Mental Floss Nicolle Sloan tagged seven novels that eerily predicted technological advancements of today. One title on the list:

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2010)

In this oddly tender, darkly funny novel, Gary Shteyngart imagines a crumbling America where everyone’s value is visible. You carry a device that ranks you on desirability, credit score, income, and political status. Dating profiles scroll overhead. Privacy is extinct, and the government is mostly broke.

At the center of it all is Lenny, a sweet old school guy in love with Eunice, a digitally native, emotionally unavailable millennial. Their relationship unfolds in a world that’s part Black Mirror and part Love Story.

Shteyngart captures the queasy reality of being ranked, rated, and datamined in public, long before influencer culture made it feel normal.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Super Sad True Love Story appears on Raul Palma's list of seven books about falling into debt, Olivia Sudjic’s list of five of the best books to explain how we behave in the digital world, Leslie Berlin's top ten list of books about high-tech, Corey J. White's list of five books about the collapse of New York City, Ginni Chen's list of seven books that belong on your social media–obsessed friend’s shelf, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of ten great science fiction novels, published since 2000, that raise huge, important questions and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, and Nicholas Carr's list of five notable books on the impact of the Information Age.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three books that celebrate complicated women

Natalie Baszile's novel Queen Sugar was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Her new novel is Friends and Family.

At Book Riot Baszile tagged three books celebrating complicated women. One entry on the list:

Take What You Can by Naima Coster

Set in France and New York, this novel explores the lives of best friends Milly and Val, two young Black women whose bond is forged during their year abroad and stretches into their thirties. What they share is the pain of having lost their mothers and a shared history with a woman from their past. Now, young mothers themselves, both living in Brooklyn, Milly and Val soon discover that love for each other might not be enough to bridge the divide that’s growing between them. Differences in their economic and familial circumstances, marital tensions, plus divergent responses to the demands of raising a child soon breed resentment and jealousy, misunderstandings. Take What You Can is a meditation on motherhood, class, and the deep satisfaction that comes from being complicated women.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve creepy small town horror titles

Richard Chizmar is the author of New York Times bestselling novels Chasing the Boogeyman, Becoming the Boogeyman, Memorials, and Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting (cowritten with son, W.H. Chizmar), and coauthor (with Stephen King) of the New York Times bestselling novella Gwendy’s Button Box, the novel Gwendy’s Final Task, and the solo novella Gwendy’s Magic Feather. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, most recently, the bestselling anthology, The End of The World as We Know It: New Stories of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Chizmar's new novel is Killing the Boogeyman.

At People magazine the author tagged twelve top creepy small town horror novels, including:

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

With echoes of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Stephen King’s The Long Walk, Dark Harvest serves up a tasty Halloween treat — or is it a trick? — for all seasons. Set in a small midwestern farming town in 1963, Partridge gives us the story of the October Boy and a strange and violent All Hallow’s Eve tradition. If you’re thinking it sounds like a modern-day Ray Bradbury tale, you would be right.

Read about the other novels on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Dark Harvest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top historical mysteries set in the early modern era

Jane Bitomsky is an award-winning author of historical fiction. Her debut historical mystery novel is Death by Misadventure.

Bitomsky has a PhD in early modern English history, a BA (Hons) and an LLB (Hons) from the University of Queensland. She’s published in academic journals, and volunteers as a baker (specialising in brownies and cheesecake) for New Zealand charity Good Bitches Baking.

At CrimeReads Bitomsky tagged six favorite historical mysteries set in the early modern era, including:

Elsa Hart, Jade Dragon Mountain

Former imperial librarian Li Du arrives in a mountainous Chinese outpost by the Tibetan border to find it teeming with traders, astronomers and soldiers, who are gathered to witness the spectacle of a solar eclipse in 1708. During the celebrations, an elderly Jesuit astronomer, and Li Du’s recent acquaintance, is murdered. The ex-librarian takes it upon himself to investigate.

What ensues is a Poirot-esque whodunit, where Li Du uses a combination of logic and luck to break down the clues, and gather suspects. There’s a colourful cast of side characters, a glimpse into everyday life in eighteenth-century China, and the reader is thoroughly educated on the proper way to prepare tea.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six horror books about feminine rage

Addison Ciuchta loves writing, reading, and writing about what she reads. She has an MA in Professional Writing, a BA in English, and a lifelong love of books. In addition to Book Riot, has written for Publishers Weekly and Independent Book Review.

At Book Riot Ciuchta tagged "six horror books about feminine rage [that will] leave readers saying, Good for her!" One title on the list:

Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth

Despite a rocky relationship with her own mother and her mother-in-law, Abby Lamb wants to be a mother more than anything. As a caretaker at an elderly home, Abby makes everything she does about fostering motherly skills. When her husband Ralph’s mother dies, though, he falls into a deep depression, and their perfect future is threatened. Especially after he starts to believe his mother’s ghost is haunting them. Abby will do whatever it takes to get her husband out of his despair and break the enduring hold his mother has on him, even in death.

Read about the other books on the list.

Motherthing is among Leah Rowan's six thrillers with troubled parent-child relationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top utopian fiction novels

At Mental Floss Chris Wheatley tagged eight utopian fiction novels to get us through these dystopian times, including:

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin numbers among only a handful of works to achieve the feat of winning all of the “big three” science fiction awards: the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula. The setting for each chapter in The Dispossessed alternates between the planet Urras and its moon Anarres. Urras is a deeply hierarchical and authoritarian capitalist society; Anarres has no laws and is essentially cooperative in nature. Le Guin offers no easy answers and highlights the difficulties that arise from the struggle between individualism and collectivism.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Dispossessed is among Daisy Atterbury's eight titles about space that reimagine what it means to live on Earth, Naomi Klein's six favorite books, and Luke Rhinehart's five favorite sci-fi satires.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles about being the poorest person in the room

Carla Vass holds a degree in English literature and economics from Barnard College, Columbia University. She began her career at Goldman Sachs before joining Uber in 2013. At Uber, she helped build the rideshare business in New York City and was part of the founding UberEATS team. In 2018, Vass was recruited by Waymo, Google's self-driving car division, to develop their delivery business, and then went on to found Civi in 2020, a tech startup focused on safety in Latin America. Born in New York City, Vass and her husband now live in Miami, Florida. When not writing or reading, she enjoys spending time with loved ones, traveling, cooking, and horseback riding.

Vass's new novel is The Rally.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine novels featuring the poorest person among rich people behaving badly. One title on the list:

Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson

The RPBB supergenre in a very specific subworld. Jackson gives you a whole clan of old-money Brooklyn Heights Stocktons, but the character who carries the thesis is Sasha, the middle-class New England girl who marries in and is instantly, permanently cast as the arriviste. It’s a beach read with a sharp eye for the machinery of inherited money: the tennis, the trust funds, the very particular cruelty of people who’ve never had to think about money toward the one person in the room who has. Funny, sharp, and a fascinating dissection of how money works inside a family.

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

Pineapple Street is among Glenn R. Miller's five novels of generational wealth & income inequality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five horror titles set in grand country homes

Jennifer Thorne is the USA Today bestselling author of Diavola and Lute, as well as several books for younger readers. With Lee Kelly, she is the co-writer of novels The Midnight Show, My Fair Frauds, The Starlets, and The Antiquity Affair. Born in the US, she now lives with her husband and two sons in the west of England.

Thorne's latest novel is Newbourne Park.

At CrimeReads she tagged "five literary country houses that also play host to devils." One title on the list:

T.H. Huddleston, The Cracks

What if the only way out of a desperate financial situation is to take up your rich friend’s offer to stay at the historic family home of his aristocratic wife while you get back on your feet? And if you happen to have certain skills in the kitchen, why wouldn’t you take on some of the domestic tasks as a means of showing your thanks? And if the ghosts of Hautmond Hall, perhaps even the house itself, would prefer to keep you in service forever…how on earth can you fight back?

This deliciously satirical horror novel shows that class distinctions are insidiously pernicious traps, even in the year 2026.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best YA mysteries/thrillers for adult readers

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged six "excellent books written for young adults that understand and love the crime genre in a way that adults will deeply appreciate, from revenge plots to a retelling of a Gen X classic," including:

The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis

If you’re ever worried that YA won’t feel dark enough or will feel like you’re being spoken down to, you can rest assured that Mindy McGinnis’ books are brutal; there’s no hand-holding here.

What this YA duology does have is an exploration of family secrets, class, anger, and revenge. Tress Montor decides to get revenge on her ex-best friend, convinced that Felicity Turnado knows who graffitied her home, fed her dog to an alligator, and what happened to her parents. How exactly will she get this revenge? By forcing a confession out of her by slowly bricking her in à la Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” Claustrophobia inducing much?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight Agatha Christie-inspired mysteries

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Bozeman, MT, with her husband and too many dogs.

Her new novel is The Undercover Bookshop.

At People magazine Reay tagged eight "contemporary novels I’ve devoured this past year and offerings I believe any Christie aficionado will love." One title on the list:

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

This novel made a splash in 2020 but good books never lose their power so it’s equally worth picking up today. I’ve included it here particularly for its sense of place. Just like Michaelides and Christie, Foley takes advantage of her isolated location — this time an island off the coast of Ireland — and throws in storms, tension and the requisite twists and turns, to create an incredibly satisfying and page-turning mystery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Guest List is among Celia Laskey's eight wedding novels for all the lovers and the haters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles with big secrets

Julia Cohen's latest book is Freak Lip (2026). She is the author of I Was Not Born (2014), a collection of lyric essays, which was translated into German and released by Literaturverlag Droschl. She’s also written two books of poetry, Collateral Light (2014) and Triggermoon Triggermoon (2011). Her nonfiction and poetry appear in issues of The Georgia Review, Southeast Review, The New England Review, Fugue, Heavy Feather Review, Boston Review, and BOMB.

Cohen has a BA from Wesleyan University, an MFA from The New School, and a PhD from the University of Denver. She’s an Associate Professor of English and Literature at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design. She teaches creative writing, literature, and composition courses. Cohen lives in Colorado Springs with her husband and fellow writer, Noel Black, and their kids.

At Lit Hub she tagged "nine books that guided my understanding of how holding or exposing long-kept secrets creates a palpable tension between regret and relief." One title on the list:

Latoya Watkins, Holler, Child: Stories

Watkins is a master of dialogue, dialect, and narrative intimacy. In this stunning collection, which centers Black women in West Texas, Watkins perfectly balances familial interactions with protagonists’ internal thoughts, creating immersive, local rhythms that invite you right into the living rooms of her characters. Their secrets manifest in different ways: infidelity, the truths hidden underneath the lies mothers tell children to protect them and the secrets children keep to shield their mothers from grief, the apologies never given.

In both “The Mother” and “Holler, Child” mothers keep from their sons their fathers’ identities to minimize potential pain and embarrassment, only to see the negative ripple effect this has on their sons’ choices as they grow. In “Vigil,” the protagonist has a simmering hatred for her childhood friend’s Muslim husband, whose gay relationship with his best friend is an indiscrete secret. She reflects on what no one will say aloud: “Thala and me ain’t close enough for me to tell her that her husband supposed to come home to her at night. Snuggle up to her at night. Not with his best friend, La Mare. La Mare who lived with them for the first three months of their marriage. La Mare who slept on their couch while Wale slept on the floor close to him.” These stories wrestle with the entanglement between desperate love and unknowability, what might be gained from speaking up, and why sometimes, we still can’t.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four bewitching books for fans of "Practical Magic"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged "four beautifully written books for fans of Practical Magic." One title on the list:

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

When it comes to authors like Alice Hoffman, Alix E. Harrow is an excellent readalike option. Like Hoffman, Harrow’s writing style includes lush world-building, intriguing magic systems enmeshed in the real world, and thoughtful reflections on deep topics. As with Practical Magic, this novel by Harrow explores themes of witches and the bonds between sisters. The story takes place in 1893 as the Eastwood sisters—James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna—join forces with the suffragettes of New Salem. Perhaps the women’s movement may also become the witches movement.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Once and Future Witches is among Chelsea Iversen's five supernatural sister stories, Kim DeRose's seven top books about witches and badass covens, Mark Skinner's twenty top witch lit titles, Sarah Pinsker's five SFF books that showcase siblings at their core, and Heather Walter's five SFF books about wicked women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five powerful horror books for animal lovers

Carrie Lee South earned her MFA at the Arkansas Writers Workshop where she served as the fiction editor for the literary magazine Arkana. She's currently the fiction editor at StoryBottle Co. Her work has appeared in Waxwing, F(r)iction, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tales to Terrify, and elsewhere. She is the author of In the Woods They Wait. When she's not reading and writing, she's spending time with birds: the ones outside and the four parrots that live in her house.

At CrimeReads South tagged five powerful horror novels in which "the animal characters are given agency." One title on the list:

Josh Malerman, Pearl

Pigs are highly intelligent, social animals. Their eyes look so human, and they always seem to be smiling. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that they could be telepathic, which is exactly what Malerman explores in this high-concept slasher. The story opens with a boy named Jeff beheading a pig on his grandfather’s farm. He’s horrified when he realizes what he’s done, because it wasn’t his idea–Pearl made him do it.

Pearl is an intimidating hog who sits like a human, and has avoided the axe for years by manipulating the farmer’s thoughts. Now that he’s tested and realized the strength of his influence, Pearl begins a gruesome murder spree. Why? “Time to kill the people who killed the pigs.” It should come as no surprise that Malerman is a vegetarian.

Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best mystery titles of all time

Andy Minshew is an author and book reviewer who explores the intersections between queerness, faith, and neurodivergence in fiction and nonfiction.

At Book Riot he tagged fifteen of "the best mystery books of all time that have defined the genre in meaningful ways." One title on the list:

Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59 #1) by Attica Locke

Considered one of the best mystery-thrillers of all time, Bluebird, Bluebird follows Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews who returns to his hometown Lark while on suspension and separated from his wife. Here he investigates the recent murders of a man and a woman that, despite what the local authorities say, he knows were racially motivated.

Read about the other mysteries on the list.

Bluebird, Bluebird is among Rebecca Joines Schinsky's seven pulse-pounding thrillers, Polly Stewart's seven new classics in Southern noir, L. Alison Heller's eight crime novels in which a small town is the perfect incubator, Janice Hallett's five gripping mysteries set in small towns, and Katie Tallo's top ten crime novels about returning home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles where the main character is, or may be, a psychopath

Hank Schwaeble is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of horror, suspense and thrillers.

He lives in Texas with his wife, fellow novelist Rhodi Hawk.

His latest novel is Normal for the Spider.

At CrimeReads Schwaeble tagged ten books where the main character is, or may be, a psychopath. One entry on the list:

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

This critically praised but relatively low-profile novel about a young man lost in the sea of malaise that is his life who has a life-changing encounter with a self-proclaimed cultural terrorist named Tyler Durden catapulted seemingly out of nowhere to take the literary community by storm in the late 90s when the movie of the same name came out starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. It’s a book about manhood, maturity, responsibility, survival and the mental strain of living in a world where absent fathers are the norm and men hold contradictory and often dangerous ideas of what manhood means, and where pathologies of the mind run rampant.

Read about the other books on the list at CrimeReads.

Fight Club is among Adam Hamdy's ten popular literary antiheroes, Benjamin Buchholz's five top novels with devilishly unreliable narrators, Camilla Bruce's ten best books about imaginary friends, Catherine Steadman's six favorite books that feature unreliable narrators, Sarah Pinborough's top ten unreliable narrators, Richard Kadrey's top five books about awful, awful people, Chris Moss's top 19 books on how to be a man, E. Lockhart's seven favorite suspense novels, Joel Cunningham's top five books short enough to polish off in an afternoon, but deep enough to keep you thinking long into the night, Kathryn Williams's eight craziest unreliable narrators in fiction, Jessica Soffer's ten best book endings, Sebastian Beaumont's top ten books about psychological journeys, and Pauline Melville's top ten revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight edge-of-your-seat reality TV thriller titles

L.M. Chilton is a journalist with fifteen years of experience working on TV shows for the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 in the UK, as well as writing columns for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour, and reporting for national newspapers across the world, everywhere from Doncaster to Delhi. He lives in London, procrastinating.

Chliton's new novel is I Think We Should Kill Other People.

At People magazine he tagged "eight of the best thrillers and mysteries set in the terrifying world of television," including:

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey by Astrid Dahl is The Real Housewives meets Knives Out

This campy mystery follows the scandalous lives of the back-stabbing (sometimes literally) cast of Garden State Goddesses. When a murder occurs, the cast become suspects and a producer must turn detective. Every lead she follows is one she helped create.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best twisty horror retellings

At Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged seven titles that take a familiar story and reimagine it in the most delightfully gruesome way, including:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

In this award-winning novella, Victor LaValle subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu story “The Horror at Red Hook,” this time telling the story from a new perspective. Charles Thomas Tester takes risky jobs to keep a roof over his head and take care of his father. But when he delivers a magical tome to a sorceress, he accidentally opens up a door to another world. This story is all-engrossing, so it’s no wonder that it won the Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award. When we’re talking about the best retellings, this novella has to make the list.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Lyndsie Manusos’s six top horror retellings of well-known stories, Erica Ezeifedi's six books for fans of the movie Sinners, Brittany K. Allen's ten top books for fans of Sinners, Chase Dearinger's seven horror titles where the setting is a monster, and Colleen Kinder's ten titles about chance encounters with strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven experimental books that reimagine how trauma is told

Erik Fuhrer is a queer, nonbinary poet, playwright, and trauma writing teacher. They hold a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and a PMP. They are the author of nine books, including Gellar Studies (2023) and the forthcoming hybrid memoir My Buffed Up Life (2026). They were the UCLA Extension Winter 2026 Writer in Residence.

At Electric Lit Fuhrer tagged seven books by "writers use form to convey the experience, emotions, and structure of trauma, keeping the gaps, the flaws, the inventions, scalping together image and sensation into something legible but messy and tangled and raw." One title on the list:

Nox by Anne Carson

Nox is an elegy for Carson’s brother, who was already partially ghost before he passed, as he left home and called rarely in his absence. In a way this elegy started years before his death, and the reproduced letters, family photographs, and sketches montaged into the book are a testament to the imprints of his presence in her life before and after death. Its accordion spine mimics an ancient scroll, log, and epic, its creased pages paralleling the fracturedness of grief. It cannot be viewed all at once, so sprawling that it would take up many rooms of feet, and therefore becomes like the history and the memory and the body lost to it: accessible in small unfoldings of time and space, but never quite tangible and accessible as a whole.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten essential Ukrainian reads

Sasha Dovzhyk is a Ukrainian writer, journalist and founder of Index: Institute for Documentation and Exchange.

Her latest book is Apocalypse Baroque: Tales from Ukraine at War.

At Lit Hub she shared a list "of books written by Ukrainians in English or translated from Ukrainian into English [that] sheds light on what has long been overshadowed by empires seeking Ukraine’s erasure: the country’s rich literary tradition and its tradition of resistance." One title on the list:

Victoria Amelina, Looking at Women Looking at War (Harper Collins, 2025)

A novelist turned war crimes researcher, Victoria Amelina travelled her war-torn country photographing bomb craters in children’s playgrounds and recording survivors’ testimonies, standing alongside the women she called her sisters: lawyers, soldiers, journalists, museum workers fighting for justice. She did not survive to finish her telling of their stories—killed by a Russian missile strike in 2023, two-thirds through the manuscript of Looking at Women Looking at War. Assembled by her close friends and family, the book’s forced silences and empty pages become its own form of testimony: a verdict for Amelina’s killers, and eternity for her voice. The book received the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best gothic mystery novels

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. At Book Riot she tagged eight of the best gothic mystery novels. One title on the list:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García

No list of gothic mysteries would be complete without this instant classic: although it is mostly known as a horror, there’s a strong current of mystery underlying this novel.

When her cousin sends her a plea for help, Noemí embarks upon a journey to High Place. She’s determined not to be afraid of anything or anyone, not even of the house itself. But soon enough, she discovers that it’s not enough to not be afraid… she also has to resist the house’s pull on her.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Mexican Gothic is among Lucy Ashe's six titles that make us question those closest to us, C.J. Dotson's five novels featuring decaying settings, and Samsun Knight's seven horror novels about mysticism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top titles set in decadent locales

Alex Hay is a bestselling author whose debut novel The Housekeepers was a Waterstones Book of the Month and Paperback of the Year and won the Caledonia Novel Award 2022. He is also the author of The Queen of Fives and The Midnight Guests, both published to great acclaim.

Hay was born in London and now lives in Brighton, U.K. with his husband.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "six brilliant novels that thread the darkest psychology into rarefied settings to completely thrilling effect." One title on the list:

Tom Hindle, Death in the Arctic

Like Agatha Christie, Tom Hindle is a master at taking an intriguing, must-visit setting—a magnificent ocean liner, a fabulous wedding on Lake Garda, a hotel in the Costa Rican jungle—and unfurling a carefully-layered mystery within it. I thought this was such a distinctive and clever setup—a luxury airship on a specially-chartered trip to the North Pole—and when you read a Tom Hindle book you always know you are in safe hands.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books that show that the Great American Road Trip Novel isn’t just for white people

Winnie M Li is an American author and activist living in the UK with her partner and young son. A Harvard graduate, Li has written for travel guidebooks, produced independent feature films, programmed for film festivals, and developed eco-tourism projects. Her first novel, Dark Chapter, was nominated for an Edgar Award and translated into ten languages, followed by the critically acclaimed Complicit. A survivor and advocate against gendered violence, she holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and teaches creative writing and media studies.

Li's new novel is What We Left Unsaid.

At Lit Hub Li tagged "eight books (both fiction and non-fiction) that narrate this most American of stories from the perspective of people of color." One title on the list:

Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon

This is the book I always recommend when asked about US road trip narratives. A bestseller upon publication in 1982, this memoir chronicles Least Heat-Moon’s 13,000-mile road trip around the perimeter of America. He drove only on two-lane ‘blue highways,’ avoiding the large interstates and taking him through small towns and neglected corners of the country. The result offers both beautiful prose and an intimate glimpse of an America which may no longer exist. Least Heat-Moon is part-indigenous, and his sensitive awareness of race, class, and historical inequalities enriches his anthropological, but poetic style.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top nineteenth-century novels

Joanna Trollope was an English writer. Some of her best known works include The Rector's Wife (her first #1 bestseller), A Village Affair, Other People's Children, and Marrying the Mistress. She was awarded the OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honors List for services to literature.

In February 2000 at the Guardian she tagged ten top nineteenth-century novels, including:

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

This has everything - joy, grief, success, failure, wealth, poverty, comedy, tragedy - and above all, atmosphere by the bucketload.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Bleak House is one of Alex Wade's ten top dodgy lawyers in literature, Elizabeth Day's ten favorite books about cities, Daisy Hildyard's ten best poems, books and plays about our human inheritance, George Packer's six favorite books, Oliver Ford Davies's six best books, Ian Rankin's 5 favorite literary crime novels, Tim Pigott-Smith's six best books, James McCreet's top ten Victorian detective stories and one of Rebecca Ford's favorite five fiction books. It is on John Mortimer's list of the five best books about law and literature and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best thunderstorms in literature and ten of the best men writing as women, and is among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mythology- and folklore-inspired horror titles

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best mythology- and folklore-inspired horror books, including:

Skin Folk: Stories by Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a titan in speculative fiction. In 2021, Hopkinson was named the 37th SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Among her many brilliant works, Skin Folk is a great title to jump into if you’re looking for a place to start with her oeuvre. Hopkinson’s collection shows her mastery not only of the short form but also of a range of genres. From stories inspired by Caribbean folklore to chilling superstitions and mind-blowing science fiction, this is a perfect read for the Fall season.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters

USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan is the author of more than seventeen thrillers including All This Could Be Yours, One Wrong Word, and The House Guest which have won every major mystery award in the industry and have been translated into multiple languages throughout the world. Her fiction is inspired by a lifetime of groundbreaking true-crime cases from a storied career as an on-air investigative journalist for Boston’s WHDH-TV for which she was awarded multiple journalism honors, including thirty-seven Emmy Awards. A TedX speaker and in-demand literary moderator, she has been called a “master of suspense” (Publishers Weekly). A native of Chicago with roots in Indianapolis, Ryan lives in Boston.

Her latest novel is Mother Daughter Sister Stranger.

At CrimeReads Ryan tagged six favorite thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters, including:

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.

Diaries are supposed to be secret, that’s inviolable. And in this brilliant gothic-adjacent thriller, the mother and the daughter are each keeping one. When there’s a murder and both diaries become pivotal evidence, what the mother and daughter learn about each other’s devastating secrets in these no-longer-private entries will keep you turning the pages as fast as you can. This is a perfect book club book—when the killer uses the daughter as leverage, how will the vulnerable mom stop them?

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

The Stranger Diaries is among M. E. Hilliard's seven best, creepiest old houses in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about the body

Lydia Mathis has an MFA in fiction from New York University. She earned her BA in English Literature with a minor in Classical Civilizations from Agnes Scott College. She has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at A Public Space. She has stories published in North American Review, Southeast Review, Torch Magazine, Stanchion, Five on the Fifth, and oranges journal.

Mathis's debut story collection is Desperate Bodies.

At Lit Hub she tagged five "books that have an entrancing focus on the body." One title on the list:

Naben Ruthnum, Helpmeet

I’m not one to typically read horror, as I’m a baby and prone to nightmares, but I read this with a friend and lived for the descriptions of a decaying body. The horror here is understated, observational. Emotions are near entirely removed, and we get to watch as if this is a kind of Cronenberg directed nature documentary. Besides the beauty and preciseness of language describing a deteriorating body, there’s also the quiet contemplation of the characters affected. There’s the crumbling husband, who makes you consider what you’d do if your body so viciously revolted against you. And then there’s the wife, who takes care of her husband. How do you bear watching a live decomposition? What must you do to survive that?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue