Five books where we're unsure which side we’re supposed to be rooting for

Marissa Meyer lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband and their three cats. Her new novel is Archenemies, book two in the Renegades trilogy.

At Tor.com she tagged five "books that test our loyalties at every turn," including:

Legend by Marie Lu

In a futuristic version of the United States called The Republic, Day is the country’s most wanted criminal, while June is an elite military prodigy. When June’s older brother is killed and Day becomes the prime suspect, June makes it her mission to hunt him down. What follows is a battle of wits as Day and June attempt to stay one step ahead of each other… until they begin to uncover a series of lies and secrets that could suggest their goals aren’t so different after all. Legend is a thrilling page turner, but what sets it apart in the world of dystopians is the amount of heart and humanity Marie Lu brings to all her characters, and the ways in which Day and June are ultimately able to bridge the gap between distrust and empathy, despite the mounting struggles between them.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine novels that tell the story of heroin and opioid abuse in America

CrimeReads senior editor Dwyer Murphy tagged nine novels that tell the story of heroin and opioid abuse in America. One title on the list:

John Burdett, The Godfather of Kathmandu

Burdett’s long-running Bangkok series is a truly uncanny outlier in the current landscape of global crime fiction. His stories, which straddle cultures, languages, and religions, are vivid hallucinations of daily life in Bangkok, where vice reigns and the locals are fiercely independent thinkers, beholden to no western codes of conduct or morality. In The Godfather of Kathmandu, Burdett’s part-Thai, part-American detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep is caught up in a heroin smuggling ring that brings together Thai police, Tibetan exiles, Chinese loyalists, Americans on the prowl, and hustlers both local and international. The drugs touch all strata of society, and the long history of opium smuggling out of southeast Asia flashes through with a cruel, quick power.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Godfather of Kathmandu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best modern Victorian novels

Paraic O’Donnell is a writer of fiction, poetry and criticism.

His essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, The Spectator, the Irish Times and elsewhere. His first novel, The Maker of Swans, was named the Amazon Rising Stars Debut of the Month for February 2016, and was shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in the Newcomer of the Year category. O’Donnell's latest novel is The House on Vesper Sands.

One of the author's ten top modern Victorian novels, as shared at the Guardian:

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (1998)

Shortlisted for the Booker prize five times, it was not until after her death in 2010 that Bainbridge was finally honoured with a specially created award. Although it was chosen from among her novels by a popular vote, Master Georgie is one of Bainbridge’s most challenging and austere works. Indeed, she herself remarked that most people needed to read it three times before they understood it. She may have been right. With its carefully modulated perspectives and slyly observed details, this refracted Bildungsroman follows a young surgeon’s almost helpless progress towards the muck and depravity of the Crimean war, and it reveals new and brilliant facets no matter how often you come back to it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Master Georgie was Erica Wagner's bad Booker beat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books with manipulated memories

W.L. Goodwater's debut novel is Breach. At Tor.com he tagged five books with manipulated memories, including:

The Giver by Lois Lowry

This classic hardly needs my recommendation, but if—like me—you missed reading it as a kid, do yourself a favor and grab a copy. YA dystopias are everywhere these days, but none can match the emotional gut punch of Jonas’s journey as he becomes a Receiver of Memory, the one member of his community forced to know the sins of their past. But it is what he learns about the present that is most haunting, as he alone can see what has become of a world that never learns and never regrets.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Giver made the Tor Teen blog's lit of eleven top YA dystopian novels, Jeff Somers's top five list of science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics, Jen Harper's top ten list of kids' books from the ’90s that have proven to be utterly timeless, John Corey Whaley's top ten list of coming of age books for teens, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's list of thirteen top, occasionally-banned YA novels, Guy Lodge's list of ten of the best dystopias in fiction, film, art, and television, Joel Cunningham's list of six great young adult book series for fans of The Hunger Games, and Lauren Davis's top ten list of science fiction’s most depressing futuristic retirement scenarios.

Coffee with a Canine: Lois Lowry & Alfie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top modern gothic mysteries

Wendy Webb's new novel is Daughters of the Lake.

One of eight favorite modern gothic mysteries she tagged at CrimeReads:

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay

Stephen King said: “A Head Full of Ghosts scared the hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare.” Need any more than that? Okay here’s a description. This is a terrifying story about what may or may not be the demonic possession of a teenager, mixed with our culture’s obsession with reality TV. The parents of a teen who is behaving in an increasingly bizarre and terrifying way contact a Catholic priest in desperation. He comes, and brings a reality TV crew who documents the entire thing…which is a horror in itself.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books to understand drinking

Leslie Jamison is the author of the essay collection The Empathy Exams, a New York Times bestseller, and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Her latest book is The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath.

At the Guardian, Jamison tagged five of the best books that "offer solace, if not salvation" to readers in the grip of drinking. One title on the list:

Billie Holiday’s memoir, Lady Sings the Blues, is a searing account of her life as a brilliant artist, a heroin addict, simultaneously worshipped as a siren of sorrow and persecuted by a legal system structured by systemic racism. Booze runs like a glimmering ribbon through these pages – she even makes moonshine from potato peelings while incarcerated – but Holiday emerges as a figure far more nuanced and human than her mythic image. In one memorable scene, she cooks red beans and hamburger meat – out of cans, heated with steno fuel – for the entire staff of her London hotel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about adventure and exploration

David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. His new book, The White Darkness, is a true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic.

One of Grann's six favorite books about adventure and exploration, as shared at The Week magazine:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1902).

More than a century after it was first published, this novel remains one of the most subversive adventure tales. What begins as a classic Victorian quest narrative becomes a journey into the insidious nature of imperialism.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Heart of Darkness is on Katharine Norbury top ten list of books about rivers, Michael Palin's six favorite books list, Robert Twigger's list of five of the best books about rivers, Robert McCrum's list of ten of the best closing lines of books, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of six favorite novels of empire, John Mullan's list of ten of the best fogs in literature, Tim Butcher's list of the top 10 books about Congo, Martin Meredith's list of ten books to read on Africa, Thomas Perry's best books list, and is #9 on the 100 best last lines from novels list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Tan's ten desert island books

Amy Tan’s books include the novel The Joy Luck Club and the memoir Where the Past Begins.

One of her ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

I was stunned when I read this book in the 1976, and not just because it was the first book I read by an Asian-American woman. Hong Kingston wraps family history around myth and discovers the ghosts of women who have traveled through time into her own life. I felt those ghosts and went looking for mine.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Woman Warrior is among Patricia Lockwood's six favorite books, Karen Joy Fowler's six favorite books about "almost magical" women, Ginni Chen's top seven books to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Sheep, Eva Hoffman's top five striking memoirs, and Julia Alvarez's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top medical thrillers

Lydia Kang is an author of young adult fiction, adult fiction and non-fiction, and poetry. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction.

Her most recent novel is The Impossible Girl.

One of Kang's top nine medical thrillers, as shared at CrimeReads:

Coma, by Robin Cook

This was my first introduction to Robin Cook. I was a kid in the 1970s when the movie version came out and I had nightmares over the movie posters that showed bodies suspended by filament. The concept—harvesting bodes for organs—is not new, but some of the imagery in the book was creepily new and unforgettable. A classic medical thriller.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top Chicago books

Eve L. Ewing is assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. She is the author of Electric Arches, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Washington Post, and many other venues. She was born in Chicago, where she still lives.

Ewing's new book is Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.

One of six essential Chicago books she tagged at Publishers Weekly:

Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks

This is the essential anthology of poems by Brooks, who was the Illinois Poet Laureate for many years. Aside from the artistic significance of her work as a doyenne of the Black Arts Movement and her craft as a documentarian of everyday people, one of the most important aspects of her legacy lay in her model of what it means to be a writer-in-the-world. Brooks’s mentorship, unassuming demeanor, and personal attention toward younger poets established the groundwork for the city’s contemporary literary landscape.

Read about the other entries on the list.

See: Andrew Rosenheim's top ten books about Chicago.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven modern classics of conspiracy noir

LitHub crime editor Dwyer Murphy tagged eleven modern classics of conspiracy noir for CrimeReads. One title on the list:

Stephen King, 11.22.63

King’s alternative history / conspiracy / sci-fi epic is a truly mind-bending novel, with Jake Epping, a local high school teacher in Maine, discovering that his diner’s pantry is also a time travel vessel that delivers him to September 9, 1958, at which point he can struggle to change historical events, including JFK’s assassination, but only against the dimension’s stubborn efforts to stop him. The story is guaranteed to alter perceptions and call into question the supposedly linear march of history, especially when you decide that time itself is a co-conspirator.

Read about the other entries on the list.

11/22/63 is among Peter May's six best books and Molly Driscoll's top six novels that explore a slightly alternate version of very familiar events.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jo Nesbø's ten favorite books

Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø is the author of the best-selling Harry Hole series. His latest novel is Macbeth. One of his ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Gentlemen, by Klas Östergren

This has been a cult novel in Sweden ever since it was published in 1980, and has to some degree been discovered in Norway, too. It steals from both the classics and pulp fiction and has this couldn’t-care-less attitude combined with literary talent that reminds me of Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries. Both have this special sense of time and place that makes you want to move to Stockholm or New York.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue