Five titles about dangerous plants

Benjamin Percy is the author of six novels, the most recent among them The Unfamiliar Garden, the second book in the Comet Cycle.

At Lit Hub Percy writes:

The novels in the Comet Cycle are triggered by an age-old sci-fi concept: a comet comes streaking through the solar system, the planet spins through the debris field, and new elements are introduced to the world. These elements upend the laws of biology, geology, physics; they create chaos in the geopolitical theater; they shake up the energy and weapons sectors; and they—in a very Marvel-y sort of way—create a new dawn of heroes and villains.

Percy tagged five "stories—about dangerous plants—that seeded the growth" of The Unfamiliar Garden, including:

Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers (2018)

Microdosing psychedelics is thought to be medicinal and therapeutic by some, but in this novel, the patients at a health resort are dosed up on hallucinogenic mushrooms without consent—and the results are nightmarish. Tranquilum House is a wellness retreat where people begin again. Every one of the titular nine perfect strangers is at a breaking point, many reeling from professional and personal loss, and under the guidance of the strikingly beautiful and self-assured Masha, they’re offered a chance to heal and grow. At great financial and emotional cost of course. They participate in rituals and challenges that grow steadily more upsetting. Like all good gurus, Masha is secretly sinister and just as messed up as her clientele. She mad-scientists their chemical cocktails and manipulates them into unnerving situations.

The overall effect of the book, which shuttles compellingly between the perspectives of the characters, is that of an Agatha Christie novel: a fishbowl environment where things go terribly wrong. Now before all of you science nerds out there write a smarmy letter to the editor, we know: fungi are not plants. In fact they show more of a relationship to animals. This will be surprising to many, and this whole notion—of not knowing where one belongs or who one might be—is central to the conceit of the novel.

Read about the other entries on Percy's list at Lit Hub.

Nine Perfect Strangers is among Sherri Smith's six thrillers that feature toxic perfectionism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about family curses

Renée Branum has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Montana and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Brevity, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fellowship in 2020. She currently lives in Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a PhD in Fiction writing.

Branum's new novel is Defenestrate.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven stories "about myths and beliefs inherited from each generation," including:

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

In this modern retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, set on a vast Iowa farm, the family “curse” takes the form of duty, responsibility, and the burden of literal inheritance as the family patriarch wields his power by determining which of his three daughters will be granted a portion of his thousand-acre farm upon his death. This brilliantly told family drama investigates the complicated web of loyalties that arise within a network of family relationships, as well as how the inherited curse of silence in the face of abuse can shape a legacy of guilt and estrangement.

Read about the other entries on the list.

A Thousand Acres is among Lois Leveen's five novels that riff on—and rip off—Shakespeare, Stacey Swann's seven novels about family members making each other miserable, Robert McCrum's ten top Shakespearean books, Rachel Mans McKenny's eleven books about midwesterners who aren’t trying to be nice, Hannah Beckerman's top ten toxic families in fiction, Brian Boone's five books that offer a brand new take on pre-existing works, Edward Docx's top ten Shakespearean stories in modern fiction, Emma Donoghue's six best books, Anne Tyler's six favorite books, Sally O'Reilly ten top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Alexia Nader's nine favorite books about unhappy families, and John Mullan's top ten twice-told tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 single mothers in fiction

Beth Morrey‘s work has been published in the Cambridge and Oxford May Anthologies and shortlisted for the Grazia Orange First Chapter competition. She lives in London with her family and Polly the dog.

Morrey's debut novel is The Love Story of Missy Carmichael.

[Coffee with a Canine: Beth Morrey & Polly; The Page 69 Test: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael; My Book, The Movie: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael; Q&A with Beth Morrey]

Her new novel is Delphine Jones Takes a Chance (UK title: Em & Me).

At the Guardian Morrey tagged ten favorite "lone mothers of literature, in all their crazy, complex glory," including:

Desiree Vignes in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The tale of light-skinned Black twins who take very different paths forces you to look one way, then the other, confounding expectations. Shy, introverted Stella boldly passes herself off as white. Desiree, the headstrong extrovert, returns to their dull home town with her daughter to escape an abusive relationship. But it’s Desiree who has the dignity that Stella craves and fails to find in her desperate sham of a marriage. Yin and yang, when Stella vanishes, Desiree stays – because that’s what single mothers have to do. They stick around.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women bending morality for family

Emilya Naymark was born in a country that no longer exists, escaped with her parents, lived in Italy for a bit, and ended up in New York, which promptly became a love and a muse.

She studied art and was lucky enough to illustrate numerous publications before transitioning to the digital world.

She has a particular fascination with psychological thrillers, crime, and suspense. All the dark stuff. So that’s what she writes.

Naymark's novels are Hide in Place and the newly released Behind the Lie.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven "novels [that] are examples of women going against their moral code—to the point of self-sacrifice—to protect those they love most." One title on the list:

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Mickey is a cop patrolling the working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where she and her younger sister, Kacey, grew up. Kacey, sometimes homeless, haunts the streets for other reasons as she battles drug addiction. Then she disappears, just as someone begins killing young sex workers in the same precinct.

As Mickey searches and searches the familiar streets and interviews people she’s known her entire life, a decision she’d made years ago is highlighted. As a reader, I believed in what she did and thought she’d made the choice I would have made. Maybe. Where this novel excels is in showing Mickey’s decision from several angles, shining a spotlight on belief systems that may or may not be flawed, convictions that may have grown out of motives not entirely selfless.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Long Bright River is among Willa C. Richards's seven books about the heartbreak of losing a sibling.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six portrayals of Black girlhood in fiction

Kai Harris is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Kweli Journal, Longform, and the Killens Review, amongst others. In addition to fiction, Harris has published poetry, personal essays, and peer-reviewed academic articles on topics related to Black girlhood and womanhood, the slave narrative genre, motherhood, and Black identity. A graduate of Western Michigan University’s PhD program, Harris was the recipient of the university’s Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Award in Fiction for her short story, “While We Live.” Harris now lives in the Bay Area with her husband, three daughters, and dog Tabasco, where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Santa Clara University.

Harris's new novel is What the Fireflies Knew.

At Lit Hub she tagged six classic books that depict Black girlhood, including:

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

Based on the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give tells the story of 16-year-old Starr, who lives her life as a balancing act between two worlds. This balance is shaken when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her unarmed childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Though centered around this tragedy, The Hate U Give stands true to the legacy of Black girlhood fiction by giving Starr an authentic voice, allowing her to tell her own story in her own way. When I read this book, two things stood out to me. First: how easy it was for me to understand Starr’s perspective, because it felt so much like my own.

The second thing that stood out to me was how much my work-in-progress was like The Hate U Give. Again, I found so many connections between the stories I tell (and the ways I tell those stories) with other tales of Black girlhood. And this is the beauty of Black girlhood in fiction: the stories we tell about Black girls will resonate with Black girls, but they are also universal tales of self-love and acceptance, pain and joy, strength and trauma, which will resonate with every reader. They are stories that the world needs to hear.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Hate U Give is among Chris Whitaker's six top kid narrators in literature, Sif Sigmarsdóttir's top ten novels about burning issues for young adults, and Natasha Ochshorn's seven banned books that should be required reading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great books about colonizing other planets

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in the Unstoppable trilogy, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. She's also the author of Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards.

Anders's forthcoming novel is Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, the sequel to Victories Greater Than Death.

In 2019 at Tor.com Anders tagged five great books featuring humans colonizing other planets, including:

The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mohanraj’s novel-in-stories follows a group of people living on Pyroxina Major, a “university planet” settled by South Asians, as a war is breaking out between “pure” humans on the one side and modified humans and aliens on the other. In a series of vignettes focused on sexual encounters, Mohanraj shows how people’s complex relationships and pasts are affected by this conflict. We’re also immersed in the day-to-day strangeness of living on another world, facing questions about diversity and inclusion that are even more fractious than ones faced on Earth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven notable books set in bookstores

Aleksandra Hogendorf is a writer currently based in San Sebastián, Spain.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven favorite books set in bookstores, including:

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich’s latest is a romp: an ex-convict works in a bookstore that’s haunted by the ghost of a former customer. Boisterous, poignant, powerful, stippled with richly colored characters… even on the sentence level, this book bristles with color and electric energy, building an absorbing flow that keeps you flipping the pages. This is a ghost story, a Native American story, and a mystery for the present day that touches on the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. At its core though, The Sentence is an ode to bookishness that name drops titles and authors galore, details the minutiae of operating a bookstore, and even features cameos from the author herself (who really does own a bookstore!).

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten thrilling stories of Los Angeles

Eliza Jane Brazier is an author, screenwriter, and journalist.

If I Disappear is her adult debut. Her new novel is Good Rich People.

She currently lives in California, where she is developing her books for television.

At Publishers Weekly, Brazier tagged ten titles set in Los Angeles, "the most beautiful city in the world ... at the right angle. But income disparity, a predatory entertainment industry, and government corruption also make it one of the darkest." One title on the list:

The Siren by Katherine St. John

This juicy thriller gives readers a front row seat to a Hollywood takedown via the perspectives of three women at various stages of their careers. It’s a soapy delight filled with competition, revenge, lust, and dark secrets.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Q&A with Katherine St. John.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles for the grieving brain

Mary-Frances O'Connor is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona, and the Director of Clinical Training. Her research focuses on the physiological correlates of emotion, in particular the wide range of physical and emotional responses during bereavement, including yearning and isolation. She believes that a clinical science approach toward the experience and mechanisms of grieving can improve interventions for prolonged grief disorder, newly included in the revised DSM-5.

O'Connor's new book is The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss.

At Lit Hub she tagged five books for the grieving brain, including:

Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary, & Daniel Kaufman, How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy

With a name like mine, it will come as no surprise that I was raised Catholic. After my father died, I thought a lot about how he had created a meaningful life and the relationship between his faith and his actions in this world. Although I spent years engaged in Quakerism and then Buddhism, I had never settled into a faith community. In my quest to discover the philosophic or religious views that resonated with my own, I found the collection of short essays by Pigliucci, Cleary, and Kaufman to be a valuable guide, offering me new insights into classical religions and introducing me to new philosophies such as effective altruism.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 cooks in fiction

Annabel Abbs is an award-winning author and journalist. She writes regularly for a wide range of newspapers and magazines and lives in London, with her husband and four children. Her novels, The Joyce Girl and Frieda, were published to great acclaim.

Abbs's newest novel is Miss Eliza's English Kitchen: A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship. (The UK title is The Language of Food.)

Her first foray into memoir and her first solo-authored non-fiction book is Windswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Remarkable Women.

At the Guardian she tagged ten favorite cooks and chefs in fiction. One title on the list:

Monsieur Escoffier in White Truffles in Winter by NM Kelby

The legendary French chef, Auguste Escoffier, is reimagined in his last year, as he returns to his wife, Delphine. She asks him to make her a dish, just as he did for the other love of his life, actor Sarah Bernhardt (a creamy strawberry dessert he named Fraises Sarah Bernhardt and a chocolate-dipped macaroon still known as a Sarah Bernhardt). We follow Escoffier as he ponders and then prepares a final menu for his wife: scrambled eggs served in their shells with wild caviar; a casserole of pigeon and peas; and wild strawberries served with brie that has been “drizzled with candied lavender and honey”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven titles on loving a country that doesn’t love you back

Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and tired dad of three cute kids. He believes in sharing stories that are by us, for everyone: universal narratives told through a culturally specific lens to entertain, educate and bridge the global divides.

Ali's new book is Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American.

At Lit Hub he shared a reading list of

books that honestly and eloquently express the complexity of being a modern citizen and human in an absurd country where boundaries and identities often blur, and where our existence serves as a reminder, a resistance, a correction, and a hope for a country that can still achieve its noble aspirations by including and celebrating the rest of us who’ve always been here but never received the spotlight.

One title on the list:

Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese

Like me, Yang grew up in the Bay Area and the only time he saw Asian heroes on the screen was Luk Duck Dong, the grotesque monstrosity in John Hughes totally overrated Sixteen Candles, which really hasn’t aged well. Yang’s graphic novel shares the pain of hating yourself simply due to your name, your ethnicity, your eyes, and your skin color. What happens when you look in the mirror and see only disappointment and shame? What happens when only whiteness is centered? When your school crush and the rest of the girls see right past you because you’re invisible? The graphic novel, using ancient Chinese tales, supernatural characters, realistic coming of age drama, mixes it all up and gives us a way forward.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine thrillers in which class warfare is a zero-sum game

Eliza Jane Brazier is an author, screenwriter, and journalist.

If I Disappear is her adult debut. Her new novel is Good Rich People.

She currently lives in California, where she is developing her books for television.

At CrimeReads, Brazier tagged nine books that pit the Have against the Have-Nots, including:

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel follows scholarship student Lee Fiora as she enters an exclusive prep school. Lee is looking for a better life but finds herself continually on the outside of her classmates’ glamourous lives.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Prep is among Bethany Ball's seven of the weirdest high schools in literature, James Scudamore's ten top books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's eight stories about what really happens on campus, Lucy Worsley's six best books, and James Browning's ten best boarding school books.

--Marshal Zeringue