Five top books about siblings

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's forthcoming book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books about siblings, including:

Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing

Rausing’s account of her brother Hans’s and sister-in-law Eva’s struggles with drug addiction is, in many ways, an ordinary story. The “individuality of addicts”, Rausing writes “is curiously erased by the predictable progress of the disease”. But in this case, the Rausing family’s Tetra Pak fortune, and the grim circumstances around her sister-in-law’s death, created something more seemingly sensational, and her family’s life swiftly became the stuff of tabloid headlines. This is a thoughtful and compelling memoir about guilt, boundaries and the fictions of memory – “the stories that hold a family together, and the acts that can split it apart”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top bad-neighbor thrillers

Seraphina Nova Glass is an Edgar Award-nominated author. Her fifth and latest book is The Vacancy in Room 10.

Named a New York Times Book Review Summer Read and an Amazon Editor’s Pick in Mystery & Thrillers, her last book, On A Quiet Street, earned her #1 bestselling status in the Thriller category on Amazon. It was also hailed by Bustle as one of “10 Must-Read Books” and one of “10 Top Thrillers To Read On Your Summer Vacation” in the Boston Globe.

[ Q&A with Seraphina Nova Glass]

At CrimeReads Glass tagged six "thrillers is guaranteed to give you the chills and keep you up all night." One title on the list:

Stranger In The Lake by Kimberly Belle

Charlotte has escaped her troubled past and impoverished childhood and now lives her dream life, in her dream house, with a loving husband and seemingly no problems…except that everyone talks. Did she get pregnant to trap him, did the trailer park girl marry him for his money?

That all seems like petty gossip when a body washes up by the dock behind their house and she’s faced with real, life altering problems. Does she really know the man she married? Can she trust his friends who are all suspect and seem to be hiding secrets themselves? Is she in danger?

This story was immediately gripping and atmospheric. Belle breathes fresh life into a familiar storyline and creates a truly page-turning and spellbinding mystery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top titles about total solar eclipses

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged seven top books about solar eclipses, including:

American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World by David Baron

What better way to spend this eclipse than reading about a historic one? Scientists race against time to capture a total solar eclipse in its full magnitude and remind us that even though it’s been almost 150 years, we have always looked to the sky in wonder. (How do you think Thomas Edison would feel about our nifty eclipse glasses?)

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels set in refugee camps

Helen Benedict, a British-American professor at Columbia University, is the author of eight novels and six books of nonfiction, several of which feature refugees and war. Her latest nonfiction on refugees is Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, co-authored with Syrian writer, Eyad Awwadawnan.

[My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen; The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen; The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season]

Benedict's new novel is The Good Deed.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven novels set in refugee camps; in each novel "the overarching theme is not misery but love, whether for a romantic partner, a parent, sibling, friend, or child." One title on the list:

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

This novel, too, centers on African refugees, but in this case, their settlement is not a camp but first a shanty town on the streets of Berlin, which is set up as a protest, and then an anthill-like building in the city that was once an old people’s home. There, refugees from all over Africa—Niger, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and more—live in stark, dorm-like conditions while awaiting either asylum or deportation.

Erpenbeck, a German author of some acclaim, writes feelingly from the point of view of a retired and widowed professor named Richard, who is at a loss over what to do with himself until he falls into a fascination with the refugees in his city and begins to visit them in their anthill of a building to give lessons in German. The story weaves between Richard’s perspective and that of the refugees themselves, bringing out Erpenbeck’s compassion and respect for her characters. Soon enough, as Richard gets to know certain men in the building, they emerge from the word “refugee” into fully realized human beings, each with his own story, needs, and claim on Richard’s conscience.

In essence, this thoughtful and elegantly-written novel is about how the privileged can actually help after all, if only with their money, shelter and sympathy; almost the opposite message to the much more cynical one in The Wrong End of the Telescope. And yet, Go, Went, Gone remains a condemnation of how the Western world, Europe in particular, pushes refugees around like so many sacks of refuse. As Erpenbeck has a character say near the end of the novel, “Where can a person go when he doesn’t know where to go?”

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six mysteries about translators

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople, and recently returned to Central Texas after five years in NYC. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged "six recent stories in which translators and interpreters play a pivotal part," including:

Harriet Crawley, The Translator

Harriet Crawley was married to a Russian, lived and worked in Russia for decades, and is a fluent Russian speaker, so it’s no surprise that her 2017-set novel feels as authentic as a le Carre tale when it comes to underhanded deeds and doomed romance. Crawley’s narrator is a skilled translator called up by the British government to help negotiate an important trade deal. His mission soon goes off-course when he encounters another translator, his former lover, who needs his help: her surrogate son, a hacker who got on the wrong side of the FSB, has died suspiciously, with few interested in a thorough investigation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels with rotating perspectives

Shilpi Somaya Gowda is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four novels: Secret Daughter (2010), The Golden Son (2015), The Shape of Family (2020), and A Great Country (2024).

Her novels have been translated into over 30 languages, been #1 international bestsellers in several countries and sold more than two million copies worldwide.

At Lit Hub Gowda tagged ten "favorite novels, where the varied voices of family members together create richly layered stories." One title on the list:

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a master of creating authentically believable stories about celebrity figures who don’t exist. In her third novel, she takes a fictional 1950s crooner who was minor character in a previous novel (Evelyn Hugo), makes a cameo in another (Daisy Jones), and shows us his legacy in the form of his four children.

The Riva children, with varying levels of glamour, appear to have classic Southern California lifestyles, as professional surfers and swimsuit models. But they are far from caricatures; indeed, they’re fully drawn, complex and flawed human beings who give us insight into their lives, their relationships with one another, and how they’ve been impacted by their famous but absent father.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Malibu Rising is among Laura Griffin's seven suspense titles in which paradise is not what it seems and María Amparo Escandón's eight top books about living in Los Angeles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels sparked by the authors' work life

Alexia Casale is a British-American author, script consultant, and course director of the MA in Writing for Young People program at Bath Spa University. The Best Way to Bury Your Husband is her adult debut. Casale has over a decade of experience as an editor specializing in the field of male violence against women and girls, having been an executive editor of an international human rights journal. She holds two master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Essex.

At Electric Lit Casale tagged eight novels inspired by the author’s day job, including:

Forensic Anthropologist: The Temperance Brennan series by Kathy Reichs

From Patricia Cornwell (who worked at a medical examiner’s office) to Kathy Reichs (a forensic anthropologist whose crime novels inspired long-running TV-series Bones), crime writers with a background in policing or the analysis of evidence have become increasingly common as an ever more sophisticated readership looks for greater authenticity. It’s not just the ‘telling details’ that matter—and which are easily enough seized upon—but the types of story that emerge organically from specific types of work, happening in specific contexts, within a specific professional culture.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Bones to Ashes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top psychological thrillers by women

Nadia Khomami is arts and culture correspondent at the Guardian.

She tagged five favorite psychological thrillers by women, including:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

No list of psychological thrillers is complete without Gone Girl. Flynn’s 2012 novel has become a staple of the modern suspense thriller and a reference point for the entire publishing industry. Both of Flynn’s narrators – Nick Dunne and his wife Amy, who write alternating accounts of their stricken marriage – are unreliable. It’s dark, funny and unexpected, and the twist hits you like a gut punch. It’s a testament to its ingenuity that the book has spawned an inexhaustible list of imitators.

Read about the other entries at the Guardian.

Gone Girl made Kaley Rohlinger's list of fifteen of the best books with unreliable narrators, Katherine A. Olson's list of five books with righteous female rage, Azma Dar's list of five dark novels that explore the sinister side of marriage, Jonas Jonasson's top ten list of books about revenge, Suzanne Redfearn's list of six novels about women trying to outrun their past, Max Manning's top ten list of psychopathic crime & thriller characters, Steven L. Kent and Nicholas Kaufmann's list of six favorite literary human monsters, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Jo Jakeman's top ten list of revenge novels, Amanda Craig's list of favorite books about modern married life, Sarah Pinborough's top ten list of unreliable narrators, C.A. Higgins's top five list of books with plot twists that flip your perception, Ruth Ware's top ten list of psychological thrillers, Jane Alexander's top ten list of treasure hunts in fiction, Fanny Blake's list of five top books about revenge, Monique Alice's list of six great fictional evil geniuses, Jeff Somers's lists of the top five best worst couples in literature, six books that’ll make you glad you’re single and five books with an outstanding standalone scene that can be read on its own, Lucie Whitehouse's ten top list of psychological suspense novels with marriages at their heart and Kathryn Williams's list of eight of fiction’s craziest unreliable narrators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top marriage-gone-bad thrillers

Debut author L.K. Bowen was born in Boston and made her way to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry. Like Ellie, her protagonist in For Worse, her debut novel, Bowen has the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, which is slowly destroying her vision. To learn more about rp and other degenerative retinal diseases, or to contribute to finding treatments and cures, please visit www.fightingblindness.org.

At CrimeReads Bowen tagged ten favorite marriage-gone-bad thrillers, including:

The Family Remains, by Lisa Jewell, pub. 2022

This is a sequel to The Family Upstairs, following the lives of the children in the aftermath of their traumatic childhood. This is a tale where many different strands from the past come together to inform and heal the characters in the present, something Jewell does brilliantly. There is a Marriage Gone Bad amid the strands, and it’s horrifying, but it’s only one part of a complex and compelling story that, like most Lisa Jewell novels, you can’t put down.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top nonfiction baseball books

Keith O'Brien is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist.

He has written four books, been a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, been longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and has contributed to multiple publications over the years.

[The Page 99 Test: Outside Shot]

O'Brien's new book is Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.

At Lit Hub O'Brien tagged nine great nonfiction baseball books, including:

Howard Bryant, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron

Baseball biography is its own category, deserving of its own list. But a great place to start is this sweeping biography of Henry Aaron, the man who passed Babe Ruth in 1974 to claim baseball’s home run record. It was one of baseball’s greatest moments, but one that also revealed hard truths about America’s worst problems. Some fans were upset because Aaron was Black.

“The racial divide in America was apparent,” Bryant writes, “even during his victorious trip around the bases.” In this retelling of Aaron’s story, he’s more than just a ballplayer; he’s living proof of how America is changing.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels inspired by the Bible

Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. Her novel The Nine (2019) was honored with the 2019 Foreword Indies Gold Award in Thriller & Suspense and the Gold Medal and Juror’s Choice in the 2019 National Indie Excellence Awards. Eden (2017), her debut, won the Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her new novel is Daughter of a Promise, a modern retelling of the legend of David and Bathsheba, completing the thematic trilogy Blasberg began with Eden and The Nine.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven "novels based on the Bible that prove love, passion, and jealousy will always be universal," including:

Paradise by Toni Morrison

In the Bible, Exodus is the story of an enslaved people searching for a home for their community: a paradise. Weaving together multiple timelines, Toni Morrison’s Paradise follows former African American slaves who founded the town of Haven, and then Ruby, in Oklahoma as a refuge from racism. The allusion to the Garden of Eden is also obvious in the novel’s title, Paradise, which foreshadows the inevitability of tensions arising between members of the community. Convent, an all-female inhabited house, crops up on the outskirts of town in response to Ruby’s patriarchal governance. Convent becomes both a scapegoat and a threat to the male leaders of Ruby. The novel explores generational trauma, the women of Convent are haunted by their pasts as well as the collective history of the community.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight dark science mystery novels

Nova Jacobs has an MFA from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and is a recipient of the Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Jeremy. She is the author of The Stars Turned Inside Out and The Last Equation of Isaac Severy.

At CrimeReads Jacobs tagged:

eight dark science gems: some are recent, some prefigure the dark academia craze entirely—all use science to underpin the murkier aspects of human nature.

One title on the list:

Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott

This is truly a laboratory novel. Abbott’s story pitches between past and present, but we spend much of our time among the benches of a chemistry lab getting a sense for our heroine Kit’s postdoctoral research into a severe premenstrual disorder, right down to the grim business of the laboratory mice. After the research group’s newest hire turns out to be Kit’s high school frenemy—and a dead body on the grounds throws their relationship into a shaky détente—the already fraught tension of the lab is heightened by a police investigation. Add to that a rich backstory of female friendship tainted by grave secrets and academic competition, and you’ve got an all-consuming science thriller.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Give Me Your Hand is among Stephanie Feldman's seven top novels featuring ambitious women, Alafair Burke's eight best female friendships in books, Lisa Levy's eight top thrillers about women in the workplace, Layne Fargo's eight top thrillers featuring ambitious women, Allison Dickson's ten thrillers featuring a dance of girlfriends and deception and Carl Vonderau's nine notable moral compromises in crime fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue