Seven top vacation and road trip rom-coms

New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch's novels include Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years, and Time of My Life. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

Her new novel, Take Two, Birdie Maxwell -- think Notting Hill meets The Proposal -- is new in bookstores.

At LitHub Scotch tagged seven favorite great vacation and road trip rom-coms, including:

Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash’s Ashes

Okay, you need to pick this one up for the premise alone: our heroine, Millicent, promises her elderly best friend that she will carry her ashes from Washington D.C. to Florida to reunite her remains with the woman she believed was her one true love. (Seriously, this is the best idea—I read this wishing I had come up with it!) When flights get cancelled, Millicent is forced to drive, along with an acquaintance who may or may not be a smoke-show, and who, of course, is as cynical about love as Millicent is optimistic.

I loved this book for its swoony vibe, its exploration of many facets of love, and of course, the crackling leads.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven modern gothic novels featuring a feminist perspective

Paulette Kennedy is the bestselling author of The Witch of Tin Mountain and Parting the Veil, which received the prestigious HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. She has had a lifelong obsession with the gothic. As a young girl, she spent her summers among the gravestones in her neighborhood cemetery, imagining all sorts of romantic stories for the people buried there. After her mother introduced her to the Brontës as a teenager, her affinity for fog-covered landscapes and haunted heroines only grew, inspiring her to become a writer. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in fog.

Kennedy's new novel is The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven books that "serve to illustrate the dangers of misogyny while centering the power and resilience of all women." One title on the list:

A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland

When village midwife Jean discovers a laboring mother outside her cabin one dark and stormy night, she falls into a web of dark secrets centering on her neighbor and his mysterious new wife in this sapphic retelling of The Selkie Wife folktale. While charming Muirin claims to be happy with her husband, Jean can’t overlook the fear in her new friend’s eyes. Her growing concern—and growing feelings—for Muirin means she can’t set her worries aside. But when the answers she’s seeking are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, Jean finds herself in peril as she strives to save the woman she loves.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books to read on St. Patrick’s Day

At The Zoomer Book Club Athena McKenzie tagged ten "notable books illuminate the history, culture and food of the Emerald Isle," including:

WE DON'T KNOW OURSELVES: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MODERN IRELAND by Fintan O'Toole

The judges for the An Post Irish Book Awards described Fintan O’Toole’s chronicle of his country as “a book that will remain important for a very long time – a reflection of who we are and where we came from. Truly, this is a book for the ages.” The 64-year-old journalist and author uses his own life and experiences as a guide to chart the course of Ireland’s tumultuous social, cultural, and economic change.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles from across the world about isolation

Scott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship between memory, emotion, and literature.

The Other Valley is his first novel.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight novels from across the world about isolation, including:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is about memory, lies, and hope. Another theme, emblazoned in its title, is loneliness. Kathy is an itinerant “carer” whose adult life is a slow blur of passing fields, motorway pit stops, and hospital visits. As her own ominous transition into a hospital grows near, she reflects on her childhood at a secluded school called Hailsham, before her friends were distributed around England for a purpose long kept secret from them. Ishiguro’s novel is a tender look at the transience of human connection. It’s also a masterpiece of worldbuilding-by-elision that blends golden nostalgia with growing horror.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Kat Sarfas's list of thirteen top dark academia titles, Raul Palma's list of seven stories about falling into debt, Akemi C. Brodsky's list of five academic novels that won’t make you want to return to school, Claire Fuller's list of seven top dystopian mysteries, Elizabeth Brooks's list of ten great novels with unreliable narrators, Lincoln Michel's top ten list of strange sci-fi dystopias, Amelia Morris's lits of ten of the most captivating fictional frenemies, Edward Ashton's eight titles about what it means to be human, Bethany Ball's list of the seven weirdest high schools in literature, Zak Salih's eight books about childhood pals—and the adults they become, Rachel Donohue's list of seven coming-of-age novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural, Chris Mooney's list of six top intelligent, page-turning, genre-bending classics, James Scudamore's top ten list of books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about democracy in crisis

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist and leader writer. He was formerly a correspondent in the Baltic region and Russia. He is the author of Politics: A Survivor's Guide.

At the Guardian he writes about

the permacrisis – a state of perpetual turbulence that folds geopolitical tension into cultural polarisation and spins it all around in a furious vortex. It can feel like being knocked over in the sea, unsure which way is up, afraid that another wave will strike the moment you breach the surface.

Behr says the "usual political narratives aren’t adequate to explain what is happening." He recommends five books that "go deeper," including:

Why Politics Fails by Ben Ansell

Ansell is professor of comparative democracy with a ferociously sharp mind and a genial turn of phrase. He has organised pretty much the whole of political practice and theory into five paradoxes (traps, he calls them) from which policymakers and voters around the world struggle to break free. This book is clinical, an MRI scan of the democratic soul in torment.

Read about the other entries at the Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books with women behaving badly

Sophie Wan is a graduate of UC Berkeley and spent too long writing emails before she picked up writing fiction.

As a Bay Area native, she has no choice but to enjoy outdoor activities, but prefers those where her feet remain firmly on the ground. She’s currently shivering her way through grad school in Philadelphia.

Wan's debut novel is Women of Good Fortune.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven of her "favorite books with women behaving badly." One title on the list:

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

London, 1905. Mrs. King gets unceremoniously let go from her position as housekeeper of one of the grandest homes in Mayfair. After the wrongs that have been committed towards her, she pulls together a crew of skilled women to ransack her former place of employment during a grand costume ball. It’s always refreshing to watch the wronged take back power for themselves, especially during a period when social hierarchy was defined so rigidly. I can never resist a good heist, and this one was no exception.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about young women searching for identity & purpose through work

Vanessa Lawrence is a writer, editor and native New Yorker. For almost two decades, she covered fashion, society, culture, design, art, and beauty on staff at publications including WWD and W Magazine. She has interviewed a wide range of creative personalities, such as Anna Sui, Kristen Stewart, Norma Kamali, Janelle Monae, Sandra Oh, Emma Watson, Kyle Abraham, Laura Kim, Judith Light, Sarah Sze, Timothée Chalamet, Jennifer Hudson, and Riley Keough, among many others. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in history and she has an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Lawrence debut novel is Ellipses.

At Electric Lit she tagged "eight books ... featur[ing] women protagonists coming-of-age through and against the backdrop of their work." One title on the list:

All this Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Sneha, the protagonist of Mathews’s novel, moves to Milwaukee for a corporate consulting job. She is fresh out of college. America is enveloped in a recession. Her parents have returned to India. Sneha is exploring her queer identity for the first time in the local dating pool. At first her traditional gig seems to provide her with the kind of cushy stability of which many a recent graduate might dream. That security proves a mirage as a mix of work troubles, housing insecurity, romantic turmoil, and family secrets threaten Sneha’s burgeoning adulthood. Interrogating the promise of a capitalist American Dream, this novel explores the role of community and human connection vs. individualistic success in personal happiness.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers featuring amnesiacs

Amy Tintera started writing novels as a kid during her middle school science classes, which probably explains why she has always been very bad at science. She is now the New York Times bestselling author of several novels for young adults, including Reboot, a Kids Indie Next pick and YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, the Ruined series, The Q, and All These Monsters, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection. Her novels have been translated into 16 languages and sold into more than 20 territories.

Tintera has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M and a master’s degree in media arts/screenwriting from Emerson College. She worked as a talent agency assistant in Hollywood before becoming an author. Raised in Austin, Texas, she frequently sets her novels in the Lone Star state, but she now lives in Los Angeles, where there's far less humidity, but not nearly enough Tex-Mex.

Her new novel, Listen for the Lie, is her first novel for adults.

At CrimeReads Tintera tagged five of her favorite "lost memory books," including:

In The Woods by Tana French

Three kids go into the woods, two never come back. This book is about Rob, the third child, who is found with blood-soaked shoes and no memory of what happened to his friends. Twenty years later, he’s a detective investigating a child’s murder in those same woods. This book employs another popular amnesia trope – the trauma-suppressed memory. This is the most devastating way to use the trope, in my opinion, because it causes a sense of dread through the whole book. We want the character to remember, but we also worry that he’ll be traumatized forever if he does. The ending of this one can provoke strong opinions, and one thing is for sure – you won’t forget it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

In the Woods is among Emily Schultz's eight top novels about memory loss, Gabino Iglesias's fifty best mysteries of all time, Kate Robards's five thrillers unfolding in wooded seclusion, Paula Hawkins's five novels with criminal acts at their heart, Alafair Burke's top ten books about amnesia, Caz Frear's five top open-ended novels, Gabriel Bergmoser's top ten horror novels, Kate White's favorite thrillers with a main character who can’t remember what matters most, Kathleen Donohoe's ten top titles about missing persons, Jessica Knoll's ten top thrillers, Tara Sonin's twenty-five unhappy books for Valentine’s Day, Krysten Ritter's six favorite mysteries, Megan Reynolds's top ten books you must read if you loved Gone Girl, Emma Straub's ten top books that mimic the feeling of a summer vacation, the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books from Ireland's newer voices, and Judy Berman's ten fantastic novels with disappointing endings.

The Page 69 Test: In the Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty autobiographies that inspired influential women to dream big

Glamour "reached out to 20 women who inspire us—CEOs, authors, journalists, founders, influencers, and more—to ask them which women’s autobiographies have challenged them, made them dream bigger, or helped them feel more confident to carve their own paths."

Diana Fersko's pick:

Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker

As a teen I read a lot of feminist books. One that stuck with me was Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. I was always interested in reading about the particular experiences of women, especially women who didn’t fit into the narrow confines of society in one way or another. Walker’s book was about exactly that. She couldn’t fully be herself in most situations; there was always a part left out.

As a Jewish girl in a predominantly Christian culture, I could relate to her experience in my own way. I was always shifting my identity, downplaying and even hiding my Jewishness…. I remember, she didn’t wrap it all up in a neat bow at the end. She acknowledged that she was still evolving, still becoming who she was meant to be. I found that inspirational.
--Rabbi Diana Fersko, senior rabbi of the Village Temple in Manhattan and author of We Need to Talk About Antisemitism

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about women over 60 who defy societal expectations

Andrea Carlisle is the author of a recently released collection of essays on aging, There Was an Old Woman: Reflections on the Second Coming of Age. She taught fiction and nonfiction for the Oregon Writers’ Workshop and other writing organizations in Oregon and Washington. Her work has been published in literary journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and by independent presses. Her popular blog, Go Ask Alice ... When She’s 94, focused on her mother's aging, on the deep and often funny intergenerational exchanges between mother and daughter, and on caregiving.

At Electric Lit Carlisle tagged seven books "from around the world that take older women seriously," including:

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

A literary mystery set in wintry Poland among a group of mostly deserted houses, this novel touches on not only crime, alarm, and bizarre events but slowly reveals a deeper mystery: what lives in the heart of a singular old woman. Janina is our guide through the strange happenings that unfold. Witty, quietly charming in her way, and darkly smart, she is an astrologer, an observer, an animal lover and caretaker of the houses abandoned for the season by wealthier neighbors. Her telling of what happens in this remote area is reminiscent more of a fairy tale than a mystery, the sort where children are lost in a forest and stalked by something coldly threatening.

The original mystery may not turn out to be the reader’s ultimate reason for wandering deeper and deeper into the marrow of this novel, but it’s a hard book to describe without ruining that element of it. Like Um Qasem, Janina sees that the world we naively sum up and set apart as “nature” entwines with out of control human desires and ambitions. She must confront the perceived imbalances that threaten what she cares about. Her telling of shadowy events may be riveting, but not as riveting as she is.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is among Francesca McDonnell Capossela's seven titles about women committing acts of violence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles exploring real life crimes

Megan Cooley Peterson is an author, editor, and coffee drinker. As a teenager, Peterson was part of a cult-like doomsday church that didn’t like to be questioned. She questioned anyway. She has written more than 200 nonfiction books for children on a wide variety of topics, including dinosaurs, sharks, urban legends, and haunted objects. She is also the author of two young adult thrillers, The Liar’s Daughter (2019) and Dead Girls Talking (2024). Peterson lives in Minnesota with her husband and daughter.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight books exploring real life crimes in fiction and narrative nonfiction. One title on the list:

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie is the story of a girl trying to find her sister’s murderer, and a male podcaster telling their story. Summers’s choice to make the podcaster a man is no coincidence. Her novel is a fascinating, cutting exploration of how society in general, and the true crime genre in particular, exploits women and girls and turns their pain into entertainment.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Sadie is among Lisa Schroeder's seven top mysteries about teens, Kate McLaughlin's seven top fictional characters who are bent but not broken and Kate Kessler's six top revenge thrillers featuring female protagonists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen fierce & unforgettable women in fiction

At the Amazon Book Review the editors tagged thirteen of their "favorite novels that showcase fierce and fiery female protagonists," including:

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

If you’re looking for a story of a feisty female bootlegger

Sallie has grit and gumption, and is a narrator to root for—not just because she defies convention by wearing pants, carrying a gun, and refusing to marry—but because she genuinely wrestles with her family legacy, however good, bad, and ugly it may be. Set in Virginia during Prohibition, Hang the Moon charts the life of Sallie Kincaid, sent away by her stepmother at a young age, who returns home nine years later as a woman to be reckoned with.
—Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue