Five novels about the world after the end of the world

At Tor.com James Davis Nicoll tagged five works about the world after the end of the world, including:

We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart (2021)

The submarine Leviathan survived the nuclear war that scoured the surface world. In the years since then, the nuclear submarine has patrolled the seas, sheltering the faithful who labour within it. The devout who call Leviathan home know that one day the final Judgement will come, the day when they will finally use their last SLBM to redeem the sinful Topsiders.

When necessary, Leviathan recruits new choristers from Topside. Many recruits are willing. Leviathan’s most recent acquisition is not. Forcibly kidnapped for her technical skills, the latest crewmember brings unwelcome news to the faithful: They may have fundamentally misunderstood the post-war world, and their great mission may in fact be deepest folly.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about magical & mysterious libraries

At Book Riot, Megan Mabee tagged eight of the best books about magical and mysterious libraries, including:

THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY (THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY #1) BY GENEVIEVE COGMAN

The Invisible Library combines two of my favorite things: steampunk and libraries. Irene works as a librarian for the Library, a most mysterious organization that exists between worlds and collects books from all realities. Sent to a supernatural Victorian London with her assistant Kai, Irene seeks a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Much to her chagrin, she’s not the only one after

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable retellings of "Jane Eyre"

Rachel Hawkins is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books for young readers, and her work has been translated in over a dozen countries. She studied gender and sexuality in Victorian literature at Auburn University and currently lives in Alabama. The Wife Upstairs is her first adult novel.

At CrimeReads, Hawkins tagged five retellings of Jane Eyre that influenced The Wife Upstairs, including:

Jane, by April Lindner

Taking Charlotte Bronte’s quintessential brooding hero and turning him into an equally brooding rock star just feels right, and April Lindner’s modern update of Jane Eyre captures the dark romanticism of Rochester and Jane’s love story perfectly. In this version, Edward Rochester is now Nico Rathburn, a famous musician about to make his comeback. Jane is still Jane, a poor college student here who, following the deaths of her parents, takes a job as nanny for Nico’s daughter, Maddy. Obviously, sparks fly, but like his Victorian predecessor, Nico has a big secret.

This retelling is maybe the most faithful of all of them, following Jane’s original story closely, but Lindner manages to up the swoon factor and she doesn’t shy away from how moving Jane’s story into modern times increases the forbidden aspects of Jane and Rochester’s relationship.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fourteen books that are so hot they're basically erotica

At Bustle, K.W. Colyard tagged fourteen books that are so sexy they're basically erotica, including:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

A married British nurse finds a magical portal to 18th-century Scotland in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Distrusted by the highlanders who take her in, Claire marries Jamie, an inexperienced Laird with a bounty on his head, in order to protect herself from the encroaching British forces.

Read about the other books on the list.

Outlander is among Kiersten White's five best books that recycle historical legends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten historical crime titles that trace the history of New York City

Stacie Murphy began writing A Deadly Fortune in March of 2017 as a way to force herself to stay off Twitter in the evenings. (It didn’t work).

At CrimeReads, Murphy tagged "ten novels—ranging from the early 18th century to the middle of the 20th, some standalones and others part of wonderful series—" that trace the history of New York City. One title on the list:

The Gods of Gotham, Lyndsay Faye

The first installment of Faye’s Timothy Wilde trilogy follows former barman Wilde as he takes a position with the copper stars, New York City’s first organized police force. Wilde and his fellow star police, as they’re commonly known, have their work cut out for them. The city’s population has ballooned from around 60,000 at the beginning of the 19th century to nearly half a million by 1845, when the novel begins. Thousands of desperate, starving Irish immigrants are staggering off of ships every week, fleeing famine, and the city’s native residents don’t necessarily welcome their arrival. When Wilde begins investigating the murders of children—or “kinchin,” in the argot of the city’s criminal class—he runs the risk of further inflaming a city already on the edge. Faye’s vivid use of historical detail and language is nothing short of brilliant.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Gods of Gotham.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about the unknowable

Peter Ho Davies’s latest book is A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book).

At the Guardian, Davies tagged ten "books that each in their various ways face the unknown, less to dispel mystery than to accept it," including:

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Another book that seems to hover in the uncertain space between memoir and fiction. In this case the formal uncertainty reflects on, most obviously, the unknowability of a friend’s suicide, but also more subtly on the status of the friendship itself and the essential unknowability of even those we love – whether human or animal (in the form of a great dane called Apollo).

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Friend is among Mia Levitin's ten top books about consent, Lee Conell's seven books about New York City’s stark economic divide and Eliza Smith's twenty books to help you navigate grief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine novels that explore secrecy and deception in racial identity

Zach Vasquez is a native of Los Angeles, California. He writes fiction and criticism.

At CrimeReads he tagged "nine crime, suspense and noir novels that revolve around the act of racial passing," including:

The Human Stain, Philip Roth

The third and final entry in the late, great Philip Roth’s American Trilogy, 2000’s The Human Stain contains one of the author’s most startling and controversial reveals (which, given his talent for meta-narrative trickery, is saying something). Initially, we’re led to believe that the story’s protagonist, the aging and newly widowed Coleman Silk, is a white Jewish man not too dissimilar to Roth’s narrator (and alter ego) Nathan Zuckerman. It’s only around the half-way mark that Roth—following in the footsteps of authors like Dorothy Hughes and Charles Willeford—reveals that Silk is actually a Black man who has spent his entire adulthood passing. What follows is a complex examination of identity by one of America’s greatest novelists working at the top of his game. The Human Stain is included here because in its back half it shifts gears and becomes something of a thriller (and, ultimately, a murder mystery), one that involves Silk’s attempts to protect his newfound love from the violent attention of her disturbed Vietnam vet ex.

While Roth never dived headlong into the genre, the thematically-linked trilogy of novels he produced at the turn of the century—American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain—all use crime as a lens through which he attempted to understand what he dubbed the “American Berserk”. In centering the final novel of that trilogy around passing, Roth connected his grand theme to the greatest of all-American transgressions.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Human Stain is among Jess Dukes's ten brain-expanding books for the college-bound teen and John Mullan's ten best fishing trips in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books like "The Queen's Gambit"

At Bustle, K.W. Colyard tagged ten "books like The Queen's Gambit that prove chess is far from boring," including:

A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer duBois

After finding her late father's letter to a minor Russian celebrity among his belongings, Irina packs her bags and heads for St. Petersburg. Facing certain death from the degenerative illness that killed her father, she's intent on forcing an answer out of Aleksandr Bezetov: a chess champion who has just challenged Vladimir Putin in what will surely be an ill-fated presidential campaign. As Irina and Aleksandr draw closer together, the letter's inquiry — How does one proceed in a lost cause? — becomes critical to them both.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: A Partial History of Lost Causes.

My Book, The Movie: A Partial History of Lost Causes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fourteen of the best books about unions, organizing, and American labor

At Book Riot, Sarah Ullery tagged fourteen top books about unions, organizing, and American labor, including:

IN A DAY’S WORK: THE FIGHT TO END SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST AMERICA’S MOST VULNERABLE WORKERS BY BERNICE YEUNG

Immigrant women who work as janitors or farmworkers or domestic staff are often the most vulnerable to sexual violence in the workplace. These are women who work low-paying jobs and have little to no resources to fight against abuse.

In Bernice Yeung’s book, she tells the stories of some of the women who have fought back. Many of the women who step forward to report abuse are shoved aside by bureaucrats, indifference, or under- resourced government agencies; but there are stories of women who persist and beat the odds. No labor movement will ever be successful unless all workers are protected equally.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten romance novels for fans of Netflix's "Bridgerton"

At Vulture, Carly Lane tagged ten romance novels to read after binging Netflix's Bridgerton, including:

My Fake Rake, by Eva Leigh

Early on in Bridgerton, Daphne and Simon agree to feign romantic interest in one another in order for him to stave off matchmaking mamas and so she can attract more suitors. If the fake courtship trope is what you’re after, then try the first book in Leigh’s Union of the Rakes series, which puts a Regency-era twist on classic ’80s movies. Lady Grace Wyatt wants to earn the attention of a handsome naturalist, and what better way than to use another man to spike his competitive interest? But her only potential candidate is her colleague, anthropologist Sebastian Holloway. She’ll have to make him over into a rake that would rival any suitor, but she doesn’t expect to fall for him along the way.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best titles of 2020 you might have missed

At Lit Hub, Bethanne Patrick ten of the best books of 2020 you might have missed. including:

Cai Emmons, Vanishing (Leapfrog Press)

Short but very smart, Vanishing examines how modern women still disappear in plain sight, from others, yes, but also from themselves. An attorney and young mother begins to wonder if her house malfunctions when her husband is absent. An obese model for a life-drawing class terrifies a younger female student, who sees the model’s body as “one massive private part.” Each character Emmons creates has her assumptions shattered by prejudice, illness, violence, and each must emerge on the other side of vanishing to either build new identities, or accept invisibility. The prose is plain because the thought is deep in these pieces, perfect for those who love Lorrie Moore, Kristen Roupenian, and even Fay Weldon.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best books for a new year

Sophie Hannah is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling writer of crime fiction, published in forty-nine languages and fifty-one territories. Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide.

She has also published two short story collections, five collections of poetry, and the self-help books, How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment-The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life and Happiness: A Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve it.

At the Guardian, Hannah tagged a few books to see in 2021, including:

Another superb novel about creating a new life with a new identity is Philippa Gregory’s Zelda’s Cut. I first read it more than a decade ago and it’s still vividly imprinted on my memory, as is its lesson: that we can always choose who we want to be, and never have to let others define us.

Read about the other books Hannah recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue