Ten of the best female-fronted thrillers

L.S. Hilton grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris, and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. She has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster, and is presently based in London. Her new novel is Maestra. One of Hilton's top ten female-fronted thrillers, as shared at the B&N Reads blog:

Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood

Mental illness, spiritual fanatics, a notorious nineteenth-century murderess who has been misunderstood, this book has everything.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Alias Grace is among Rebecca Jane Stokes's top seven books for fans of Orange Is The New Black and Tracy Chevalier's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well. Somers notes that sometimes that dash of uncertainty over what’s real and what may have seemed magical to those involved can elevate historical fact into near-fantastical fiction. At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, including:

I, Claudius, by Robert Graves

The Romans were a superstitious lot, convinced that the gods influenced every moment of their lives and could be manipulated through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. They often believed in magic and saw it everywhere, and even Rome’s masters weren’t immune to its influence. In telling the story of Claudius, proclaimed Emperor after his nephew Caligula was murdered, Graves offers us a perceptive, intelligent man who sincerely tries to be a good emperor—but who also sees prophecy, magic, and a hidden world of spirits everywhere he looks. Graves’ peerless writing makes the often dull business of ruling an empire seem fascinating, and the hero’s tragic life will make you feel pity for an emperor for perhaps the only time in your life, even as it transforms ancient Rome into a doomed fantasy kingdom.

Read about the other entries on the list.

I, Claudius also appears on Tracy-Ann Oberman's six best books list, the Telegraph's lists of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels and the twenty best British and Irish novels of all time, Daisy Goodwin's list of six favorite historical fiction books, a list of the eleven best political books of all time, David Chase's six favorite books list, Andrew Miller's top ten list of historical novels, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of his six favorite novels of empire, Annabel Lyon's top ten list of books on the ancient world, Lindsey Davis' top ten list of Roman books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best emperors in literature and ten of the best poisonings in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top YA novels about the afterlife

At the B & N Teen Blog, Jenny Kawecki tagged five top Young Adult novels about the afterlife, including:

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall, by Katie Alender

When Delia inherits a house from her aunt, she doesn’t know the house used to be an insane asylum…or that it’s haunted. But something darker lurks in Hysteria Hall than just the ghosts of troubled girls, and when Delia gets unexpectedly trapped in the house, she’s forced to figure out what it is and how to stop it, or her family’s lives might be at stake. As if that wasn’t hard enough, all she has got to help her are some crazy, strong-willed ghosts and guarded warnings from the creeped-out locals. Will that be enough?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten YA books that will change your life

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 ten YA books that might change your life, including:

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

Okay, so I always start my Brown Girl Dreaming recs with the caveats that a) it’s middle grade, b) it’s verse, and c) it’s a memoir. But all that being said, Woodson’s Dreaming—a National Book Award winner and Coretta Scott and Newbery honoree—is a must-read. Her languorous and thoughtful ruminations on her childhood growing up in both the Jim Crow South of the ’60s and rough and tumble ’70s Brooklyn is rhythmic and mesmerizing, full of quiet spirit and insights as a young girl discovers herself as reader, a writer, and so much more.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top teen books about male friendship

Brian Conaghan was raised in the Scottish town of Coatbridge but now lives and works as a teacher in Dublin. His books include When Mr Dog Bites, The Boy Who Made It Rain, and the newly released The Bombs That Brought Us Together. One of his ten favorite teen books about male friendship, as shared at the Guardian:

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Set in the 1960s North Dublin and narrated by 10-year old Paddy Clarke, the eldest child of his family. Paddy has a glut of friends; he’s probably closest to Kevin Conway, a rather unlikeable kid, and James O’Keefe, is a good deal more - despite being, quite possibly, the biggest liar in Barrytown. The most adorable of Paddy’s friends, however, are a pair of brothers called Liam and Aidan. The boys’ mother is dead, and though their father is trying his best, he seems to be a little lost.

It’s set at a time when not only society is changing, but Paddy’s home life and friendships are dramatically changing too. There’s a certain sadness about watching Paddy grow up as the story unfolds; witnessing his trajectory from the warmth of the book’s beginning to the tragedy of the book’s denouement.

Read about the other books on the list.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is among John Mullan's ten best child narrators in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books that expand our mental horizons

A native of Seattle and Soldotna, Alaska, Steve Toutonghi studied fiction and poetry while completing a BA in Anthropology at Stanford. After pursuing a variety of interests, he began a career in technology that led him from Silicon Valley back to Seattle. Join is his first novel.

At Tor.com, Toutonghi tagged six top books that expand our mental horizons, including:

Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984)

In Neuromancer, characters enhance their mental abilities by tapping into a network. Maybe ironically, these connected characters are fighting for different kinds of personal freedom. At the end of the story, we learn that an AI may be on a path toward ultimate truth, but if it is, it will leave its human creators behind to find it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Neuromancer made Ann Leckie's top ten list of science fiction books, Madeleine Monson-Rosen's list of 15 books that take place in science fiction and fantasy versions of the most fascinating places on Earth, Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Joel Cunningham's top five list of books that predicted the internet, Sean Beaudoin's list of ten books that changed his life before he could drive, Chris Kluwe's list of six favorite books, Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time and Annalee Newitz's lists of ten great American dystopias and thirteen books that will change the way you look at robots.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about freedom

Scottish writer Karen Campbell is the author of six novels, most recently Rise and This is Where I Am. One of her ten top books about freedom, as shared at the Guardian:

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

An incomplete novel set in occupied France, written by a woman whose voice was extinguished by the Nazis – yet lives on in an unfinished masterpiece. There can’t be any more poignant or eloquent tribute to freedom of expression than that.

Read about the other books on the list.

Suite Française is among Sarah Stodol's ten top lost-and-found novels, Max Hastings's ten best books on war, David Lodge's five best books about social class, and Howard Bloch's five best books about France.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mouthwatering quotes from the greatest literary feasts

At the Guardian Phoebe Walker tagged eight of the best feasts quotes in literature, including:

"The most prominent object was a long table with a table-cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An épergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it>"
--Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, published 1861

Read about the other quotes on the list.

Great Expectations appears on Rachel Cooke's top ten list of single women, Robert Williams's top ten list of loners in fiction, Chrissie Gruebel's top ten list of books set in London, Melissa Albert's list of five interesting fictional characters who would make undesirable roommates, Janice Clark's list of seven top novels about the horrors of adolescence, Amy Wilkinson's list of five books Kate Middleton should have read while waiting to give birth, Kate Clanchy's top ten list of novels that reflect the real qualities of adolescence, Joseph Olshan's list of six favorite books, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature, ten of the best appropriate deaths in literature, ten of the best castles in literature, ten of the best Hamlets, ten of the best card games in literature, and ten best list of fights in fiction. It also made Tony Parsons' list of the top ten troubled males in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books. The novel is #1 on Melissa Katsoulis' list of "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact."

Read an 1861 review of Great Expectations.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten fictional characters based on real people

Jeff Somers is the author of We Are Not Good People, the Avery Cates series, Lifers, and Chum. He has published over thirty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories 2006 anthology. One of his ten fictional characters based on actual people, as shared at the B&N Reads blog:

Sethe from Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Anyone who has read Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel likely had to compose themselves after the revelation of the shattering backstory of the main character, Sethe, an escaped slave who (spoiler alert!) killed her two-year-old daughter rather than see her snatched back to the plantation. The emotional response grows only more powerful when you learn Sethe was based on a slave named Margaret Garner, who fled from Kentucky to Ohio when one of the coldest winters in recorded history froze the Ohio River solid enough to serve as an escape route. When slave-catchers surrounded the house she had barricaded herself in, she did in fact kill her daughter, and when captured, was in the process of killing her other children in order to spare them a life of slavery. Margaret never stood trial; returned to her owners in Kentucky, she was moved frequently in a successful effort to hide her from the Northern authorities.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beloved also appears on Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books where assassins are the good guys

Jeff Wheeler's latest novel is The Queen's Poisoner. At Tor.com he tagged five novels where assassins are the good guys, including:

The Druid of Shannara by Terry Brooks

This book is one of my all-time favorite novels by Brooks and the reason is because of Pe Ell. This assassin works for the bad guys and the good guys simultaneously and it’s never clear exactly which he prefers. Truly, he’s on his own side and his interests align with the good guys—most of the time. Pe Ell relishes a challenge. He takes risks. To say he’s mercurial doesn’t begin to do it justice. He has a magical blade called the Stiehl and he’s never afraid to use it. He was one of the most original characters that Brooks invented in his Shannara world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Padma Lakshmi's six favorite books

Padma Lakshmi is the host of Top Chef, Bravo's long-running TV series. Her new memoir is Love, Loss, and What We Ate. One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

No other writer has inspired me more. M.F.K. Fisher has an uncanny knack for taking something mundane and rendering it sublime. She salts her writing with good common sense and peppers it with a wicked wit.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten worst traitors in fiction

At the B&N Reads blog Kat Rosenfield tagged ten of the worst traitors in fiction, including:

The Marquise de Merteuil, Dangerous Liaisons

This old-school epistolary dive into the sexual intrigues of the aristocracy in France’s Ancien Regime is rife with two-faced friends and lovers, but no one plays all sides like the beautiful, villainous Marquise. By the time she gets her comeuppance in the form of exile and a ruined face, she has betrayed basically every major character in the book—sometimes more than once.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses also appears among Heinz Helle’s top ten novels featuring hateful characters, Jonathan Grimwood's top ten French Revolution novels, Helena Frith Powell's top ten sexy French books, H.M. Castor's top ten dark and haunted heroes and heroines, and John Mullan's top ten best lotharios in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue