Joyce Maynard's six favorite books

Joyce Maynard's novels include To Die For, Labor Day, and Under the Influence. One of her six best books, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

Always a master of psychological ambiguities in relationships — and a perennial favorite of mine — McEwan here depicts a friendship gone horribly wrong. When we meet vacationing lovers Colin and Mary, their relationship has turned stagnant. The heat and passion return when they meet another couple — until their new friends take them to a chilling and violent place.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Comfort of Strangers is among Jean Hanff Korelitz's six best books about failed marriages, five books that changed Evie Wyld, Kate Kellaway's top ten fictional holidays, and John Mullan's ten best visits to Venice in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-five books about women in war

At Bustle Kristian Wilson tagged twenty-five top books about women in war, including:

Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm

The Nazi regime imprisoned women at many of its concentration camps, but Ravensbrück was the only prison designed to house women exclusively. A very small percentage of its prisoners were Jewish; most were political enemies of the Third Reich, lesbians, former experiment victims, and prostitutes. Sara Helm's Ravensbrück is the story of the camp and the women it held.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Caitlin White's list of eleven books that tell the stories of women in the U.S. armed forces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five YA reads that transport you to dreamland

Eric Smith is the author of The Geek’s Guide to Dating and Inked. One of five YA reads that explore dreams which he tagged at the B&N Teen blog:

Dreamstrider, by Lindsay Smith

In this exciting standalone fantasy, we meet Livia, who is, as you might guess from the title, a dreamstrider. She can enter the world of dreams, and through it, affect people who slumber. Trained by a brilliant scholar and scientist, she uses her gifts as a dreamstrider to explore the dreams of enemies, inhabit their bodies, and get information. But, she isn’t that great at it. So what happens when you’re supposed to be the hero, but you’re not the best at what you do?

There’s so much to love in this world that I’m hard pressed to figure out what to highlight. You’ve got the layers upon layers of political intrigue, built up as a result of two kingdoms on the cusp of a war that’ll ravage the physical world and the world of dreams (if you’ve read Smith’s Sekret duology, you know she loves the political intrigue). And then there are the characters, memorable and flawed, and the romances and betrayals that weave throughout. And then, of course, we have the story, which is thrilling, imaginative, and just un-put-down-able.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that explain Russia today

Sergei Lebedev's debut novel is Oblivion. At Publishers Weekly Lebedev, who was born in Moscow in 1981, tagged ten books that explain Russia's complicated past and present, including:

The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

When he became president, Vladimir Putin joked at a meeting of his colleagues from the FSB (the successor to the KGB): “Mission accomplished. The undercover operation was successful.” Even back then there were many who didn’t take this as a joke.

In the USSR the Central Committee reined in the KGB’s ambitions to power, using it as an instrument, “a sword of retribution.” The lone exception was Yuri Andropov, who became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1982.

The book by Borogan and Soltadov shows how, in the post-Soviet era, the situation has been diametrically reversed. Political parties and the executive and legislative branches of power have become instruments of a group of KGB’ers, agents who have become the true masters of the country.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten rodents in children's fiction

Ross Welford is the author of Time Traveling with a Hamster.

One of his ten favorite rodents in children's fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

Stuart Little by EB White

If you’re going to do talking mice in clothes, why not go the whole hog and have one with human parents? Such is the charm of EB White’s 1945 classic that the sheer strangeness of the concept soon becomes irrelevant. The rest of the human cast take a humanised rodent in their stride as well, and Stuart Little gets to drive a car (a small one, obviously) and even has a diminutive human girlfriend. Sounds ridiculous, is ridiculous – but it’s funny, heart-warming and exciting all the same.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Kate DiCamillo's ten best rodents she has known and loved in children's books and John Mullan's list of ten of the best rats in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top ten books of war reportage

Janine di Giovanni, the Middle East editor of Newsweek and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, has won four major journalistic awards, including the National Magazine Award. Her new book is The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria.

One of di Giovanni's top ten books of war reportage, as shared at the Guardian:

Hiroshima by John Hersey

And here is where compassion lies. All the brutality and horror of war down to the most base level, told by six survivors. On par with Heart of Darkness. I was 15 when I read it, and it changed my life.

Read about the other books on the list.

Hiroshima is on The American Scholar editors' list of the eleven best sentences in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Robb's six best books

David Robb is best known for playing Dr. Clarkson in the TV series Downton Abbey and Sir Thomas Boleyn in the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall. One of his six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson

A perfect adventure story that encourages reading in the young. I was an only child so I read a lot. It frightens you in a delicious way. There’s the tap, tap of Blind Pew’s stick and the perpetually drunk Black Dog. You just know he’s a wrong’un.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Treasure Island also appears on Gillian Philip’s top ten list of islands in children's fiction, Robert Gore-Langton's top twelve list of the greatest children's books of all time, Emily St. John Mandel's list of the six books that influenced her most as a writer, David McCallum's six best books list, Bear Grylls's top ten list of adventure stories, Eoin Colfer's top 10 list of villains in fiction, Charlie Fletcher's top ten list of swashbuckling tales of derring-do, Robert McCrum's list of the ten best first lines in fiction, John Mullan's list of ten of the best pirates in fiction, and among Mal Peet's top ten books to read aloud, Philip Pullman's six best books, and Eoin Colfer's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five YA books about intrepid aspiring reporters

At the BN Teen Blog Nicole Hill tagged five YA novels about intrepid aspiring reporters, including:

Fake ID, by Lamar Giles

In this tightly plotted, blisteringly paced thriller, Nick Pearson is pounding the pavement like any investigative reporter worth his salt. Though Nick’s circumstances are slightly different than most reporters: he and his family are in the witness protection program, thanks to his father’s previous occupation as bookkeeper to a mobster. But it’s hard to keep your head down when your new friend, the editor of the school newspaper, turns up dead in suspicious circumstances. Instead of lying low, Nick has to dig deep to find the truth—and it involves a lot of very close calls with danger.

Read about the other books on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Fake ID by Lamar Giles.

The Page 69 Test: Fake ID.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel Cusk's six favorite books

Rachel Cusk is the author of three memoirs and eight novels. One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

This is a book all women should read, to find out how we became what we are in the modern world; ditto all English people. Lawrence is the great analyst of transformation and change and self-realization, and this novel — about three generations of an English family — leaves readers with the skills to continue that analysis in their own living of life.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Ursula Brangwen, who features both in The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920), is among Judith Mackrell's five young fictional heroines in top coming-of-age novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven stories of truly science fictional romance

At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ceridwen Christensen tagged eleven stories of love and robots. One title on the list:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Honestly, I struggled with whether to include this one. I figured I’d get a bunch of people yelling at me if I didn’t at least acknowledge it, even though there really isn’t a central love story. Dick’s works often grapple with what it means to be human, both how we can know ourselves and what the world around us is. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? follows the (sort of) bounty hunter Rick Deckard, tasked with “retiring” rogue androids. He ends up in a tangled relationship with the very nearly human android Rachael, and, you know, could be an android himself. One of the novel’s central questions is empathy, that ability to imagine and honor the interior states of others. Maybe it’s love, maybe it isn’t—maybe you’re human, or you aren’t—but if you can’t tell the difference, what’s the difference?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also appears on Ryan Britt's list of six of the best detectives from science fiction literature, Weston Williams's list of fifteen classic science fiction books, Allegra Frazier's list of four great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, Ryan Menezes's list of five movies that improved the book, Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's list of the twelve most unfaithful movie versions of science fiction and fantasy books, Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders's list of the ten greatest personality tests in sci-fi & fantasy, John Mullan's list of ten of the best titles in the form of questions, Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs's list of ten classic sci-fi books that were originally considered failures and Robert Collins's top ten list of dystopian novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six behind-the-scenes novels for the tabloid reader

Sarah Skilton is the author of Bruised, a martial arts drama for young adults; and High and Dry, a hardboiled teen mystery. At the B&N Reads blog she tagged six top behind-the-scenes novels for the tabloid reader, including:

Gonzo Girl, by Cheryl Della Pietra

In the summer of 1992, Pietra worked as an assistant to gonzo journalist/cult novelist Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). In this lightly fictionalized account, which takes place over a longer time span, readers are immersed in a juicy, sordid, bizarre, and drug-fueled roman à clef. Gonzo Girl's narrator, Alley Russo, is a recent Ivy League grad reluctant to set aside her writing dreams to help out at her family’s business, so she leaps at the chance to work for Walker Reade at his ranch in Colorado, where he’s supposed to be finishing a long-delayed manuscript. Alley’s job is to keep him focused on typing at least a page per night to fax to his publisher, but he insists she mix him drinks and keep pace with his round-the-clock ingestion of LSD and cocaine. A coming-of-age tale viewed through a haze of debauchery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten female friendships in YA

Sara Barnard is the author of Beautiful Broken Things, which features friends Caddy, Rosie and Suzanne. One of her ten top female friendships in YA literature, as shared at the Guardian:

Elizabeth and Christina in Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty

Feeling Sorry for Celia is one of the landmark books of my teens and there’s one pretty clear reason why: it was the first teen book I’d ever read where the story was about friendship instead of romance. But it didn’t lose anything for being that – it’s funny and sweet and heart-warming. It’s hilarious and frustrating and sad. Feeling Sorry for Celia, which is set in Australia, tells the story of two girls in separate schools – Elizabeth and Christina – who are brought together by a pen pal scheme dreamed up by their enthusiastic English teachers. The friendship that develops alongside everything else that happens in the book is still one of my favourite across all of YA.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue