Ted Koppel's 6 favorite books

Ted Koppel, the former anchor of Nightline, has won dozens of Emmys and several Peabody awards during his long career as a broadcast journalist. His new book is Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. One of his six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

An uneasy truce exists between black and white Americans: We avoid giving offense largely by not talking about how race alters lived experience. Coates takes that subject head on, explaining the nearly constant fear that still afflicts black Americans. This is an uncomfortable book, but brilliant and right on point.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five haunted house novels you may not have read

Christopher Golden's latest novel is Dead Ringers. At Tor.com he tagged five haunted house novels you may not have read, including:

BURNT OFFERINGS (1973) by Robert Marasco

So many classic horror films were adapted from novels without most members of the viewing audience having any idea of the films’ literary origins. If you’ve seen the film version of Burnt Offerings starring Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis, you know the basic story. A couple from the city get an impossible to refuse deal on the summer rental of a mansion, as long as they’re willing to take care of the owners’ ancient mother, bringing food to her attic room. Soon, the new tenants find their bodies, emotions, and relationship withering, as if they’re being drained away. It’s an excellent film, one that scared the hell out of me as a kid. I didn’t read the novel until years later, and I wished (of course) that I’d read it first. But either way, if you love a good haunted house novel, don’t pass on Burnt Offerings.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven books about domed cities

At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ceridwen Christensen tagged eleven books about domed cities. One title on the list:

Our Lady of the Ice, by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Hope City is an Argentine colony, built in Antarctica at the turn of tan alternate 19th century as an amusement park. Fast forward to mid-century, and Hope City’s been converted to an atomic power station, the amusement park androids have gone feral, and the lights have begun to flicker. Our Lady of Ice invokes the claustrophobia of the working poor, how hard it is to get out of one’s ethnic neighborhood, even if your city isn’t cut off from the mainland during a brutal Antarctic winter. One of the characters has dreams of building agricultural domes, making Hope City autonomous from the mainland, but the metaphor is against her: they are already autonomous, and autonomy is a trap.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Frank Lampard's six best books

Frank Lampard is an English professional soccer player who now plays as a midfielder for New York City FC. He is also the author of over a dozen children’s books in the Frankie’s Magic Football series. One of his six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck

This book got me interested in English lessons at school. It captured my imagination in terms of the descriptions of the Depression era and the two main characters, Lennie and George. They’ve got a dream and go off to work but it all falls apart. It’s fantastic and timeless.

Read about the other books on the list.

Of Mice and Men is among Susan Shillinglaw's thirteen best John Steinbeck books, Becky Ferreira's six most memorable bullies in literature, Paul Wilson's ten top books about disability, and Sarah Salway's top ten books about unlikely friendships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten goodbyes in children’s literature

Lara Williamson is the author of A Boy Called Hope and The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair.

One of her ten top goodbyes in children’s literature, as shared at the Guardian:

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Hazel Grace meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support meeting. After which unfolds a love story and a goodbye that will take your heart, hug it, crush it, and then repair it again. Not long after reading the book I went to the cinema to see the movie. On leaving most of the teen audience could barely see the exit through their tears. To be honest, I could barely see the audience through my own eye water.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Fault in Our Stars is among 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

Ten adventure books that should be in every kid’s library

At the BN Kids Blog Connie Diaz de Teran tagged ten adventure books that belong in every kid’s library, including:

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien

The classic story of a widowed mouse, Mrs. Frisby is desperate to keep her children safe from Mr. Fitzgibbons’ plow. Their yearly trek from the garden to their summer haven is complicated when her youngest son, Timothy, falls ill with pneumonia. With the help of a sophisticated group of rats called NIMH, Mrs. Frisby will experience the most perilous journey of her life…all for the love of her family.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten assassination plots in fiction

Jonathan Lee's latest novel is High Dive. One of his ten top assassination plots in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James

The playfulness of this novel is announced by its title: James’s book is not brief, is not a work of history and encompasses many more killings than seven. It’s a wonderfully bold blend of experience and imagination, fiction and fact, centring on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. James focuses on drawing the reader into a mass of ghostly voices surrounding “The Singer”: CIA operatives, groupies, journalists. “The dead never stop talking,” he writes, “and the living sometimes hear.” The judges of the Man Booker prize heard, and made this a worthy winner last month.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six works of literary fiction that take their mythical creatures seriously

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged six works of literary fiction that take their mythical creatures seriously, including:

Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell (Vampires and more)

Karen Russell never got the memo that says that in order to be taken seriously as a literary fiction writer, you have to put mythical creatures aside. Her debut story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, features characters of a lupine nature, and Russell’s most recent collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, includes elderly vampires hanging out in Santa Francesca’s lemon grove, where the lemons they suck quell their thirst for blood. In another story in the collection, “Reeling for the Empire,” Russell invents her own mythical creatures, imagining young Japanese women working in a silk factory transforming into silkworms.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top five books about asteroids and their uses

Emma Newman writes dark short stories and science fiction and urban fantasy novels. Between Two Thorns, the first book in Emma’s Split Worlds urban fantasy series, was shortlisted for the BFS Best Novel and Best Newcomer awards. Her latest novel is Planetfall—a scifi narrative about a secret withheld to protect humanity’s future.

One of Newman's top five books about asteroids and their uses, as shared at Tor.com:

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

The Sparrow is a beautiful and heart rending novel which tells a first contact tale in flashbacks as we follow the slow, painful recovery of a Jesuit priest who is the only person to return from a mission to a planet called Rakhat. After detecting a form of music coming from the planet via the SETI project, a crew is formed to go and make contact. Their craft is made from an asteroid mostly hollowed out already by a mining company extracting minerals. I love the idea of using what is considered waste material, sticking an engine on it and hurtling across space inside it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: The 10 coolest fictional asteroids of all time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fictional characters with dirty jobs

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged five unforgettable fictional characters with dirty jobs, including:

The Reconstructionist, by Nick Arvin

Most of us don’t want to look closely at the aftermath of a car accident, but for Ellis Barstow, the protagonist of Arvin’s thoughtful, compelling novel, looking closely is his job. Ellis is a forensic reconstructionist, hired to settle legal disputes by using his engineering knowledge to figure out just what caused one grisly accident after another. As the book opens, he’s trying to sort out what happened when a Mercedes collided with a bunch of wild pigs. Let’s just say it leaves a mess you’ll be glad you’re not responsible for cleaning up.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Reconstructionist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven diverse YA horror reads

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. For the B & N Teen Blog she tagged seven top spine-tingling stories that draw on myth and lore from the whole world over and the great beyond, including:

Possess, by Gretchen McNeil

Bridget Liu isn’t sure who to trust. Her psychologist dad was killed by a patient, and now her dolls are coming to life. Her boyfriend’s being a bit weird, and she’s hearing voices in her head. The worst part? They’re demons. And it’s her job to send them back to whatever hell they came from. McNeil’s deliciously creepy debut—followed by her hit Get Even series—follows everygirl Liu, who’s half-Chinese, half-Irish, and all-American, as she learns to use her demon-slaying powers and works to uncover who’s good, who’s evil, and who lurks in that murky middle. Dolls that come to life? I’ll be hiding in the closet. With the lights on. And a snack. And this book.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter James's six best books

Peter James has worked as a screenwriter and a producer of numerous films, including the The Merchant Of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. His novels include the award winning Detective Superintendent Roy Grace crime series. One of James's six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

THE EXORCIST by William Peter Blatty

The scariest book ever written. I read it in a Switzerland hotel at midnight and I was certain that there was something in the room.

In a thriller it’s important to have a believable setting with characters you care about and the characterisation in this is very clever.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue