Six books that will make you feel something

Darianne Schramm grew up in Gainesville, Florida listening to the sounds of the woods and the music of Tom Petty. When she’s not writing stories about grief, love, and characters who are slightly nihilistic, you can find her eating the darkest possible chocolate and playing overly aggressive games of Scrabble. She has a BA in Philosophy from Elon University and her Masters from the University of Southern California where they reluctantly let her write her thesis on rock and roll lyrics. She is currently getting her PhD in New Zealand where she lives with her husband, daughter, and goldendoodle.

Schramm's YA debut is 72 Hours Of You.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged "six books that make you feel deeply and widely," including:

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

You’ll Feel: The Sads

Last but not least… You didn’t think we could have a list about feeling things deeply and not include a John Green book did you? Couldn’t be done. The Fault In Our Stars is a certified YA classic for a reason. This book has it all: angst, teenagers that talk like they’re mid-doctorate, and death. Just when you think “Perhaps I will not fall victim to the cryfest everyone else seems to be having, maybe, I am made of steel!” this book will kick you square in the gut. If you want to laugh, cry, ponder life, and then cry harder this is the book for you. Just be prepared to stare at a wall for 3-5 business days afterwards.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Fault in Our Stars is among Boutayna Chokrane's ten top YA books, Nicole Hill's nine favorite meet cutes in YA history, Lara Williamson's ten top goodbyes in children’s literature, the Off the Shelf Staff's eight great books told by child narrators, Luke Kelly's five top YA novels, and Sophie McKenzie's five favorite Young Adult books that appeal to teenagers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that explore the bonds between brothers

Carson Markland is a writer and filmmaker from South Carolina. Her first novel, Men Like Us, was published by Algonquin/Little, Brown in July 2026. Her short stories have appeared in Breakwater Review and SmokeLong Quarterly, have been included in the Best Microfiction anthology, and have been longlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize.

At Electric Lit Markland tagged seven books in which "we see a variety of brothers and permutations of this thorny relationship—some younger brothers who look up to the older, some who want nothing to do with them, all inextricably bonded to a person who understands them (or doesn’t) like no one else in the world." One title on the list:

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones follows siblings Randall, Skeetah, Esch, and Junior as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina in their rural Mississippi town. Although the novel juggles multiple threads, including the coming storm and Esch’s unexpected pregnancy, one of the most compelling arcs for me centers on Skeetah—the second son—and his place within the family. While his older brother Randall is a talented basketball player whose skill offers a possible route out of their town, Skeetah devotes himself to a completely different path with the same intensity: pitbull fighting. With the two, Ward captures the subtle tension that can exist between younger and older brothers—less an outright, declared rivalry than an unspoken attempt by the younger brother to carve out a unique identity for himself. The result is an understated but no less powerful example of how birth order can shape the identities of brothers themselves.

Read about the other books on the list.

Salvage the Bones is among Bonnie Kistler's five novels that use hurricanes to heighten the drama, Kai Harris's six top portrayals of Black girlhood in fiction, Christine Hume's ten top feminist retellings of mythology, Michelle Sacks's five books with complex and credible child narrators, Amy Brady's seven books that provocatively tackle climate change, Jodi Picoult's six recommended books, Peggy Frew's ten top books about "bad" mothers, and Jenny Shanks's five least supervised children in literature. 

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great uplifting titles

Jeffrey Davies is a professional introvert and writer with imposter syndrome whose work spans the worlds of pop culture, books, music, feminism, and mental health. His work has appeared on HuffPost, CBC Arts, Collider, Slant Magazine, PopMatters, and other places.

At Book Riot Davis tagged six great uplifting books. One title on the list:

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Patrick has always loved being a guncle, or Gay Uncle Patrick, to his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant, whenever they come to visit him in Palm Springs, or he goes home to Connecticut for the holidays. But as far as his actual caretaking skills, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing — but he’s going to have to figure it out. When Maisie and Grant suddenly lose their mother, and their father is going through a crisis of his own, Patrick has to step up and look after them as their primary guardian. Although he already has a set list of “Guncle Rules” to follow, Patrick struggles to admit that he might be out of his league on this one, having never gotten over the loss of his own great love nor his stalled acting career. Not to mention being used to a lifestyle that doesn’t usually cater to young children.

As Patrick learns the hard way that sometimes parenting isn’t as easy as weekend visits, he might also learn some valuable lessons about his own life, too.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that try to keep up with Elizabeth Taylor

Stephen Greco is a novelist, journalist, media executive, editor, dramatist and Executive Director of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards, which he co-founded in 1988. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Upstate Diary and has contributed as a feature writer and editor to numerous publications including Interview magazine, New York magazine, Air Mail, The Advocate, American Way, Art News, Dance Magazine, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Latina, the London Observer, Stagebill, and The New York Times online.

His new novel is The Woman Who Had Everything.

At Lit Hub Greco tagged six books that approach the question: "Was [Elizabeth Taylor] a great actress, a great beauty, the ultimate movie star, a creature of vulgar excess, or some magnificent combination of all four?" One title on the list:

Donald Spoto, A Passion for Life: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor

If you want to begin with Elizabeth rather than “Liz,” begin with Donald Spoto. His is the most conventionally serious biography of the bunch, and the one with the deepest interest in Taylor as an actress—not simply as the proprietor of eight marriages, several world-famous diamonds, and a medical history that could fill a teaching hospital.

Spoto is particularly good on the strange doubleness of Taylor’s life: she was both the triumphant creator of an extraordinary public self and the first person it consumed. He sees the marriages not as a string of scandals but as attempts at transformation, each offering Taylor another part to play and another possible escape from the part she had been playing since childhood. At times, his psychological explanations may seem almost too orderly for a woman who lived so exuberantly in disorder. But no other biographer I’ve read gets as close to explaining how the vulnerable child, the formidable actress, and the reckless soap opera heroine could all occupy the same five-foot-two-inch frame.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 most ambitious books of all time

At Collider Jeremy Urquhart tagged ten of the most ambitious (and longest) books of all time, including:

Underworld (1997) by Don DeLillo

If Underworld progressed in chronological order, it would still qualify as quite ambitious, what with it being dense, covering a great deal of history (much of the second half of the 20th century), and being lengthy, at over 800 pages. Structurally, though, it’s all those things plus something told largely in reverse, starting with a story about a prized baseball from a match in the early 1950s, and then jumping forward to the 1990s.

It’s about people who had – or wanted to have – that baseball in their possession, but everything keeps jumping back, and though there are some people in it who are sort of main characters, Underworld goes off on tangents fairly often. It does so in a way that works unusually well, with there being something powerful about the novel overall, even if it sometimes feels hard to say just what exactly makes it feel such a way.

Read about the other books on the list.

Underworld is among Andrew O'Hagan's six favorite books, Gabe Habash's nine best art-and-book-cover matches, Alex Clark's top ten long books, and Chad Harbach's top five notable novels with sporting themes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five excellent sci-fi and fantasy mystery novels

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "exciting sci-fi and fantasy books that dip into the mystery genre." One entry on the list:

The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo

And if you want more sci-fi noir, then this book will scratch that itch. It’s a wildly original tale about an alternate United States, where chemical weapons have been created that cause emotions. The colorful weapons are quickly adopted to be used recreationally and for medical treatments. Kay Curtida is an agent with Psychopigment Enforcement, which investigates the black market sales of the drugs. And Kay’s new case has the potential to make her career…if she can survive it.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top femgore titles

S. M. Hallow’s short story “How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga” was included in the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List and anthologized in The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 3, edited by Paula Guran. Other short work can be found in Baffling Magazine, Seize the Press, Taco Bell Quarterly, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023. Her novella, How to Survive This Fairytale, was published in January 2025 and received a special edition in Rainbow Crate, a book box exclusively for queer books. The Halls of the Dead is Hallow’s debut novel.

At People magazine the author tagged eight "femgore novels that reveal the women of horror can be just as Monstrous as the patriarchy." One title on the list:

I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

After Odie Tucker is raped at college, she drives home to Arkansas for Thanksgiving and experiences a pill-induced abortion at a gas station. Instead of leaving it behind, she collects the fetal material in a water bottle, and brings it home with her. What follows is a beautifully bizarre story of agency and aliens, in which the fetus possesses Odie’s mind and helps her to get revenge on the man who raped her. Anchored by Murray’s gorgeous prose and unflinching exploration of queer identity, poverty, substance abuse and generational cycles, I’m Sorry if I Scared You is a page-turner I couldn’t put down.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Patchett's five best family saga books

Ann Patchett is the author of novels, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.

At Woman's World Patchett tagged five favorite family saga books, including:

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

In this novel by bestselling author Catherine Newman, 54-year-old Rocky finds herself caught in a painful middle ground: She’s no longer needed by her adult children for their day-to-day concerns, yet she’s constantly worried about her aging parents, all while navigating the unpredictable symptoms of menopause. When Rocky and her husband Nick embark on their annual beach vacation in Cape Cod with their kids Jamie and Willa, plus Jamie’s girlfriend, she finds herself flooded with memories—both joyful and heartbreaking—from a lifetime of unforgettable family summers.

What Ann says: “Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry. Catherine Newman does a miraculous job reminding us of all the wonder there is to be found in life.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Sandwich is among Colleen Oakley's seven novels featuring women over 40.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Schama's top 10 history books

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

Back in 1999 Schama tagged his top ten history books for the Guardian. One title on the list:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

A very unlikely book about a man in paradoxical torment. An incredible book about a loyalist, and the ultimate biography of a loser, which simultaneously puts you in his position and makes you incredibly glad you're not him. He's demanding and repulsive at the same time: it's an incredible history of an impossible man in an impossible situation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is among Maya Jasanoff's five best books on anti-revolutionary British loyalists and Jay Winik's five best portraits of the era of America's founding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the most WTF thrillers & crime novels

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged five great thrillers and crime novels with WTF premises, including:

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

This slow-burn suspense novel is built and caged (heh) in a WTF premise.

If a stranger shows up to your house with a bunch of money (which you desperately need) and a request that they be caged in your basement, you’re gonna think you’re being pranked. But this goes into seriously “I’m sorry, what now?!” territory because this is not a prank. For additional context, the homeowner is Black, and the stranger asking to be caged in his basement is white…

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles about people making art together

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the nationally bestselling author of two books of fiction— Fat Swim and Housemates, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize — and the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

At Tertulia Eisenberg tagged ten "essential reads that explore the life-changing possibilities of creating things with other people." One title on the list:

Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor

This work of narrative nonfiction book about the complicated friendship and tragic artistic collaboration between Zora Neale Hurtson and Langston Hughes reads like the best kind of novel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Zora and Langston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine terrifying Native American and Indigenous horror books

Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. are the editors of Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, an Indigenous horror anthology featuring stories by acclaimed Native American and Indigenous authors.

The collection features stories by: Jessica Doe • P.C. Verrone • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Jim Terry • Jessica Johns • A.J. Eversole • Sonia Marie Barry • Shane Hawk • Stephen Graham Jones • Alicia Elliott • Mat RudeWalker • Shaawan Francis Keahna • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Jake Arrowtop • Alina Pete • Debra Magpie Earling • Joshua Whitehead • Tommy Orange • Ramona Emerson • Erica Tremblay • Kimberly Blaeser

At People magazine the editors tagged "some of their favorite horror novels written by Indigenous authors," including:

It Looks Like You in the Dark by Mathilda Zeller

When a predatory mining company brings corporate rot into a remote Alaskan village and her sister vanishes, a young Inuk woman plunges into the Arctic dark to find her. Stalked by the kushtuka — a shapeshifting creature that wears the faces of loved ones — this novel proves how industrial greed wakes horrors far older than the colonial project of the “United States of America.”

I love how Zeller twists Alaskan Native folklore into a suffocating trap where you can’t even trust a soul. This horror debut acts like an ice pick to the nervous system: freezing, terrifying and guaranteed to make you second-guess everything sharing a room with you in the dark. —Shane Hawk

Learn about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five epistolary works of historical fiction

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 epistolary historical fiction novels. including:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A girl desperate to escape the bullying of her fellow classmates in Tokyo writes a series of diary entries documenting the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun. An ocean away, a novelist living on a remote island discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox filled with mysterious artifacts she suspects washed away in the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. It reveals the lives of people completely unknown to her. Their stories may change her completely, even so.

TW for bullying and mentions of suicide.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five cli-fi novels and eco-thrillers

Nicole Brooks has a bachelor of environmental science and a lifelong love of reading, which has enabled her to blend two of her passions - nature and writing - into stories that put people into the thick of environmental disasters. She lives just outside Calgary with her husband and two daughters and can be found curled up with a book during long, cold Canadian winters, searching the skies for bald eagles, or hurting herself while playing pickleball.

No Higher Ground is her thriller debut.

At CrimeReads Brooks tagged "favorite books which tell deeply human stories in a world where Mother Nature is more than a supporting character." One title on the list:

Jane Harper, The Dry

Aaron Faulk escaped his small town roots and became a successful police investigator in the city, returns for the funerals of his old friend and the family he apparently murdered.

This tried-and-true plot line gets elevated by the thoroughly intoxicating atmosphere of this small town in the grip of a drought. Aaron gets pulled into the investigation and his own past gets brought up in the burning heat and the suffocating lack of moisture. This is truly a story that is elevated by Mother Nature. Gripping and twisty, Harper had me racing through the pages, desperate for the conclusion. And a glass of water.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

The Dry is among Elizabeth Arnott's six atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves, Peter Nichols's six novels whose crimes and mysteries grow out of place & manners, Kate Alice Marshall's five mysteries and thrillers about returning to your hometown, Olivia Kiernan's seven modern classics of small town mystery, Sarah J. Harris's top eight mysteries with images that might stay with you forever and Fiona Barton's eight favorite cold-case mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven books about women who rewrote life and art

Anne E. Fernald is a professor of English at Fordham University. She is a scholar of British and global modernism with a specialty in twentieth-century women artists and is one of the world’s best-known experts on Virginia Woolf. She lives in New York City with her family.

Her new book is Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.

At Lit Hub Fernald tagged eleven books that "expand our ideas of what a woman’s life can be and narratives can do." One title on the list:

Katie Kitamura, Intimacies

Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth comes to the admission of the many traumas she suffered as a nurse in World War One only gradually. She recounts her bravery and her determination and only after the war can she admit how grief stricken, tired, and disheartened she has become. Similarly, Kitamura’s unnamed protagonist only gradually shares the traumas she suffers as a translator at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Her job is to translate, not to think, edit, or opine. Thus, every workday she sits and speaks the words of a notorious and evil ex-president, a man who has committed horrific war crimes. Having those atrocities, and his denials, spoken into her headphones, has a powerful effect. These are women who put themselves in danger, live in denial, and only belatedly reckon with the cost of their choices. The elegance and restraint of Brittain and Kitamura’s narratives intensify the unfolding impact.

Read about the other books on Fernald's list.

Intimacies is among Cleo Qian's nine titles about women’s loneliness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top SFF books with unusual narrators

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five great SFF novels centering older characters. One entry on the list:

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Now, since this is a list of unusual narrators, you might think that with this title, the book would be narrated by a raven. But it isn’t. (And there was already a talking bird book mentioned.) This fantasy novel is even more unusual, because its story of kingdoms, battles, and gods is told by a rock that contains the life force of an immortal god. What’s it doing in there? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven top horrormance novels

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement, and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins.

[My Book, The Movie: The Remaking; The Page 69 Test: The Remaking; My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane; Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman; The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022); The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023); Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (January 2025)]

Chapman's new novel is Devil Inside.

At People magazine the author tagged eleven top steamy, sultry, scary horror romance novels. One novel on the list:

Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe

Sure, Marcella might be a monster, but she’s always been discreet in who she eats, which is why meeting fellow professor Lacie comes at the most inopportune time. Tenure is on the line! This lovely bloody blend of dark academia and sapphic romance is not for the faint of heart, but rest assured: once you’re finished, you’ll be absolutely drenched in red.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about the messy world of ancient Rome

Michelle Berenfeld is the John A. McCarthy Professor of Classics at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. An archaeologist and fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she has done research in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and numerous scholarly publications. She lives in Los Angeles.

Berenfeld's new book is Lessons from a Lost Republic: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About This American Moment.

At Lit Hub the author tagged eight books to read if you’re interested in the Roman Empire. One title on the list:

Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia

If you find yourself missing Virgil after the Aeneid, you can turn to this lesser known, but brilliant novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is an early contribution to what is now a cottage industry of stories told from women’s points of view in classical mythology. Lavinia was the young woman whose hand in marriage was promised to Aeneas, the hero of Virgil’s Aeneid and founder of the Roman people. Her role in the origin story of Rome is crucial but unvoiced. Le Guin not only gives Lavinia something to say but also conjures her whole life and her world as they could have been or should have been. A brief but essential bit of science fiction provides the marvelous, impossible conceit that gives Lavinia agency she never had even as she remains a character written by a man in the future. She knows what is to come but makes her choices and lives her life in a magnificently described world. Le Guin’s version of pre-Roman Italy is the version I now imagine whenever I read the Aeneid.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five romance novels with teacher leads

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves
writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

At Book Riot she tagged five "favorite teacher romance novels featuring flirty banter over the school copy machine, longing glances over finger painting, happily ever afters for the people who deserve them most…and absolutely NO romances with students." One title on the list:

The Love Simulation by Etta Easton

Etta is a dedicated middle school vice principal who joins a six-week Mars simulation to compete for a cash prize she needs to upgrade the school library. When science teacher Roman joins her team, at first she thinks he must be there to sabotage her chances. They’ve had an occasionally flirtatious, frenemy relationship all year. And he’s the son of her football-obsessed principal. But day by day, he proves how dedicated he is to this project and the school, and the feelings and attraction between them are definitely growing. But Etta still can’t shake the feeling that this cute science teacher is hiding something from her. This book is perfect for any romance readers who wanted to go to space camp. And I, personally, loved reading about a female vice principal!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve historical mysteries that make the past feel dangerously alive

Oprah Daily tagged historical fiction titles that "use mystery not merely to decorate history, but to interrogate it, asking whose secrets were protected, whose stories were suppressed, and what the past can reveal when someone finally starts asking the right questions." One novel on the list:

Hall of Mirrors, by John Copenhaver

The “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s, during which gay men and women were targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI as un-American, led to countless tragedies, lost jobs, lost loved ones, and lost lives. Copenhaver employs the noir atmosphere of the time to great effect in his second installment in his Nightingale and Watson series. Lovers Philippa and Judy struggle to find out who set the fire that killed their friend Roger, while also struggling to keep their relationship strong and loving in the face of government and societal threats, including the danger Philippa’s Black family faces due to her ability to pass as white.
—Bethanne Patrick

Read about the other historical mysteries on the list.

-Marshal Zeringue

Ten chilling slasher novels

Alaina Urquhart is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dr. Wren Muller series which has been published internationally in over twenty languages. When she isn’t writing, she is also the cohost of the chart-topping podcast Morbid, and an autopsy technician by trade.

The latest Dr. Wren Muller novel is The Butcher Legacy.

At People magazine Urquhart tagged ten "summer slashers [that] are meant to be read with the porch light on." One title on the list:

Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen

This is the newest entry into my favorite summer slasher reads and it delivers at every turn. Slasher Summer follows a group of seven friends (with real Midnight Society vibes) reuniting in their sleepy, lakeside hometown of Cedar Lake Falls. The reunion takes place at a secluded cabin in the woods that served as the primary filming location for the cult classic horror flick, Slasher. With a setting like that, nothing could go wrong, right? Wrong.

A masked killer crashes their reunion and the campy, slasher energy flows right in with them. It’s fast-paced, tense and includes nods to some of the best slasher films we all know and love. With Slasher Summer, E.L. Chen has made a self-aware homage to the genre that you should read with the light on.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven historical novels set during revolutions

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged seven historical novels set during revolutions, including:

Book of Sands by Karim Alrawi

During the Arab Spring protests in Cairo, Tarek and his daughter Neda are faced with numerous difficult choices. Tarek thinks deeply about what it means to look towards an uncertain future, and how they came to be in their current situation. Alrawi’s style and fabulism communicate how difficult it was to live through such a revolutionary upheaval.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles that puncture the myths of Silicon Valley

Claire Stapleton is a writer, communications consultant, and tech labor activist. She began her career at Google, where she spent 12 years in a variety of influential communications, marketing, and executive ghostwriting roles, before co-organizing the Google Walkout in 2018, in which 20,000 employees loudly protested the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment. Stapleton now advises executives and organizations on navigating the complicated communications landscape, speaks and writes frequently about tech worker issues, and publishes an existential advice column for tech workers on Substack.

Her new book is Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech.

At Lit Hub Stapleton tagged the eight "books that most shaped my understanding of [Silicon Valley] that has become the air we all breathe—and, increasingly, choke on." One title on the list:

From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

Fred Turner is my GOAT. No one has done more to explain Silicon Valley’s founding mythology—or to show how the industry has rendered the material consequences of its power strangely invisible. Turner has pointed out that Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is among the most polluted places in America, while roughly a quarter of local families experience food insecurity. Neither fact squares with the paradise the Valley tells about itself.

At the center of the book is Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a mythological figure in Valley lore (immortalized by Steve Jobs’s “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” Stanford commencement address). Turner shows how Brand and his countercultural contemporaries transformed the computer from a symbol of military bureaucracy into an emblem of personal freedom and self-expression.

That moral vocabulary became Silicon Valley’s native language: Google didn’t just organize information; it empowered people. Facebook didn’t harvest attention; it connected humanity. AI companies aren’t merely building products; they’re democratizing intelligence.

The genius and danger of that worldview is that it recasts political problems as engineering problems. Turner gave me a framework for understanding how a profoundly anti-institutional ethos took hold, one that treated democratic institutions as obstacles to be bulldozed on the way to cyber-utopia.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top titles about chess players

Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, A Far Wilder Magic, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and has been translated into over ten languages. She holds an MA in English Literature from Tulane University and teaches creative writing at Wilkes University. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.

Saft's new novel is Immortal Game.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five of her "favorite books about chess players." One title on the list:

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

Bobby Fischer Goes to War was hands-down my favorite book I read while researching Immortal Game. It’s breezily written and a lot of fun, even if you don’t play chess. It tells the bizarre, engrossing, and incredibly dramatic story of the 1972 World Chess Championship. It also paints sympathetic, nuanced portraits of the two competitors, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, both of whom were complicated men and both of whom faced enormous pressure going into the match. The book captures something meaningful about the Cold War era, chess history, and the price of brilliance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see K.W. Colyard's list "books like The Queen's Gambit that prove chess is far from boring" and Aisling Twomey's list of seven books for fans of The Queen’s Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six humorous mystery novels

Gloria Chao is a USA Today bestselling author and a screenwriter. Her novels include The Mortal Enemy Murder Club, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, Ex Marks the Spot, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. She graduated from MIT and became a dentist before realizing she’d rather spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.

[The Page 69 Test: American Panda; The Page 69 Test: When You Wish Upon a Lantern]

At CrimeReads Chao tagged six "humorous mysteries that I have loved, ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to more subtle humor." One title on the list:

Emma Mills, Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet

When Rachel’s celebrity friend Molly is found dead, she’s the only one who knows she didn’t die of an overdose like everyone claims, and she’s going to have to prove it. This book was filled with humor and banter, all while feeling like you’re living inside a magazine getting the celebrity gossip first. You’ll be sucked into this fun ride immediately and kept guessing until the end!

Read about the other mysteries on Chao's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven memoirs about discovering close relatives late in life

BK (Kate) Jackson is an author, developmental editor, book coach, and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED, and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Jackson is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Family and the founder and editor of Severance, a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She also has a Substack about writing with ADHD.

At Electric Lit Jackson tagged seven memoirs that take "readers deep into the mind-bending and sometimes shattering experience of discovering close family late in life." One title on the list:

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden’s memoir is a funny, fierce, and heartbreaking story of coming of age as a queer, biracial, glorious misfit in a complex family in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s impossible to pin down a theme because the book is—in the best of all possible ways—all over the place. It’s about addiction, acceptance, rejection, desire, privilege, trauma, violence, identity, and the families we’re born into and the families we choose. Her voice as a memoirist renders the narrator as indelible as the most memorable of fictional characters, and while her girlhood may not be remotely typical, it is universal in ways that will resonate with all readers. Like the narrators of each of these seven memoirs, Madden finds unexpected close family, in her case when a DNA test unspools her mother’s secrets. The revelation is the coda to her memoir, suggesting that families are like glaciers, with much remaining invisible and inaccessible deep below the surface.

Read about the other entries on Jackson's list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top SFF books about gods and demons

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 science fiction and fantasy books about gods and demons, including:

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

Let’s get a little cultish. Orbit’s imprint Run For It, which focuses more on horror and dark SFF, has been one of my favorite imprints to dive into as of late. The Sea Hides Its Dead really encompasses both gods and demons.

In a post-apocalyptic world where the Northeast is suddenly doused with an immovable, unquenchable storm, Caro is asked by her professor and lover to accompany him to a stone monolith that suddenly appeared offshore. Suddenly, Caro, the professor, and other crew members become trapped in what is supposedly the dwelling place of the Cult of the Leviathan and its god. And soon, they find out they’re not alone. This story certainly leans more toward horror, but the dystopian near-future the author created is fascinating, as is the mysterious and horrific mythos of the Cult of the Leviathan.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five seriously scary horror books

Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. Her books have been international bestsellers and translated into multiple languages. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, watching horror movies, or chasing after her feral children. She lives in Tennessee with her family, two dogs who think they run the house, and a cat who actually does.

Whitten's new novel is Reliquary .

At People magazine the author tagged five "favorite horrors with autumnal vibes, so we can pretend the air doesn’t feel like walking through hot soup." One title on the list:

Other Words For Smoke by Sarah Maria Griffin

I absolutely love Griffin’s work, and this was the book that made me a fan. A house fire claims the lives of two people in Ireland, but the other members of the household know what actually happened, and it’s far more fantastical than a simple tragedy. This is a witch novel, but entirely unique in the way it’s presented, complete with alternate realities, buildings that don’t work quite right and mysterious animals doing the most. Autumn might not be explicitly invoked, but the vibes are baked into the gorgeous, layered prose.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that complicate the marriage plot

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. Formerly the editor in chief of The Rumpus, she has received fellowships from The Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.

Sawchyn's new essay collection is I Have This Thing for Flowers.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "favorite titles, both fiction and non-fiction, that complicate and distract from and look askance at the traditional story of two people falling in love and getting married." One title on the list:

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett

Surely you’ve seen the cover of Patchett latest novel, Whistler, all over this summer’s Best Of lists. Though she’s probably best known as a novelist, her nonfiction is—I think—equally wonderful. Despite the book’s title, this collection of essays is as much about Patchett’s life as an artist as it is about her romantic relationships.

In an early essay, “The Sacrament of Divorce,” we learn that the dissolution of Patchett’s first marriage “began less than a week before we were married.” For many years afterward, Patchett happily lives her life eschewing marital commitment, in several “wonderful, long relationships with people I deeply enjoyed but would not have wanted to marry for a minute.” This does not change when she meets the man who will eventually become her second husband. They live in separate houses for eleven years before her then-boyfriend’s health emergency and the benefits that legal marriage bestow tip the scales. It’s the story of a happy marriage, but a book about how to live happily without being married.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five creature feature horror novels

K. W. Colyard is the author of the BNW-nominated “Those Who Forget and Those Who Perish,” published by Seize the Press in 2022. Their fiction has also appeared in Clarkesworld and Diabolical Plots.

At Book Riot Colyard tagged five novels in which "the horrors are externalized, even personified, in the shape of the villains." One title on the list:

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

An unlucky diver has one hour to escape the bowels of a sperm whale in this remarkable novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus.

Jay’s father died by suicide in the waters near Monastery Beach. Months later, Jay is determined to bring his father’s remains home. It’s a nearly impossible task, made even more difficult when a sperm whale swallows Jay with its intended meal, a giant squid. With only an hour of oxygen left, Jay will have to muster all his courage and grit to survive.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrilling and chilling supernatural mysteries

Carinn Jade is a lawyer, writer, and cohost of the Pop Fiction Women podcast. Her debut novel, The Astrology House, was a 2025 International Thriller Writers’ Awards finalist in the category of Best First Novel.

The Dahlia Suite is her second novel.

At CrimeReads Jade tagged five "favorite books that refuse to stay grounded in the reality we can explain." One title on the list:

Sarah Pekkanen, The Women in White

I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the latest from bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen, not only because she’s a fantastic writer but because this one “goes there.” The Women In White combines a decades-old mystery with paranormal elements guaranteed to make the hair on your arms stand up.

The novel follows four remarkable young women at a prestigious university when they become the subjects of parapsychology experiments in 1964. Do they have extrasensory perception? A sixth sense? Or is it something else entirely? Told in dual timelines, the real story unfolds as old secrets rise to the surface when some would rather than stay down.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue