Amy Tan's ten desert island books

Amy Tan’s books include the novel The Joy Luck Club and the memoir Where the Past Begins.

One of her ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

I was stunned when I read this book in the 1976, and not just because it was the first book I read by an Asian-American woman. Hong Kingston wraps family history around myth and discovers the ghosts of women who have traveled through time into her own life. I felt those ghosts and went looking for mine.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Woman Warrior is among Patricia Lockwood's six favorite books, Karen Joy Fowler's six favorite books about "almost magical" women, Ginni Chen's top seven books to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Sheep, Eva Hoffman's top five striking memoirs, and Julia Alvarez's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top medical thrillers

Lydia Kang is an author of young adult fiction, adult fiction and non-fiction, and poetry. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction.

Her most recent novel is The Impossible Girl.

One of Kang's top nine medical thrillers, as shared at CrimeReads:

Coma, by Robin Cook

This was my first introduction to Robin Cook. I was a kid in the 1970s when the movie version came out and I had nightmares over the movie posters that showed bodies suspended by filament. The concept—harvesting bodes for organs—is not new, but some of the imagery in the book was creepily new and unforgettable. A classic medical thriller.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top Chicago books

Eve L. Ewing is assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. She is the author of Electric Arches, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Washington Post, and many other venues. She was born in Chicago, where she still lives.

Ewing's new book is Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.

One of six essential Chicago books she tagged at Publishers Weekly:

Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks

This is the essential anthology of poems by Brooks, who was the Illinois Poet Laureate for many years. Aside from the artistic significance of her work as a doyenne of the Black Arts Movement and her craft as a documentarian of everyday people, one of the most important aspects of her legacy lay in her model of what it means to be a writer-in-the-world. Brooks’s mentorship, unassuming demeanor, and personal attention toward younger poets established the groundwork for the city’s contemporary literary landscape.

Read about the other entries on the list.

See: Andrew Rosenheim's top ten books about Chicago.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven modern classics of conspiracy noir

LitHub crime editor Dwyer Murphy tagged eleven modern classics of conspiracy noir for CrimeReads. One title on the list:

Stephen King, 11.22.63

King’s alternative history / conspiracy / sci-fi epic is a truly mind-bending novel, with Jake Epping, a local high school teacher in Maine, discovering that his diner’s pantry is also a time travel vessel that delivers him to September 9, 1958, at which point he can struggle to change historical events, including JFK’s assassination, but only against the dimension’s stubborn efforts to stop him. The story is guaranteed to alter perceptions and call into question the supposedly linear march of history, especially when you decide that time itself is a co-conspirator.

Read about the other entries on the list.

11/22/63 is among Peter May's six best books and Molly Driscoll's top six novels that explore a slightly alternate version of very familiar events.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jo Nesbø's ten favorite books

Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø is the author of the best-selling Harry Hole series. His latest novel is Macbeth. One of his ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Gentlemen, by Klas Östergren

This has been a cult novel in Sweden ever since it was published in 1980, and has to some degree been discovered in Norway, too. It steals from both the classics and pulp fiction and has this couldn’t-care-less attitude combined with literary talent that reminds me of Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries. Both have this special sense of time and place that makes you want to move to Stockholm or New York.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten deaths in fiction

Thomas Maloney was born in Kent in 1979, grew up in London, and studied Physics at Oxford. His first novel, The Sacred Combe, was published in 2016. His new novel is Learning to Die.

One of Maloney's top ten "fictional deaths that attempt to examine the experience or the immediate anticipation of dying," as shared at Guardian:

WP Inman in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

In the abrupt, upsetting finale of this Homeric tale of a US civil war deserter, the reader shares the dying Inman’s bewilderment. There is something he wants to say to his beloved, but just before we hear it the author courteously, cinematically lifts us away. Our last glimpse – of what seems a pair of happy lovers, his head on her lap – is from a distance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Cold Mountain is among Geraldine Brooks's six favorite works of historical fiction, Charles Palliser's top ten neo-Victorian novels, Henry Winkler's best books, and Tunku Varadarajan's five most delectable combinations of fiction and food.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five crime novels set in small-town Australia

Emma Viskic is the author of the multi-award-winning Caleb Zelic series. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Resurrection Bay, won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, as well as an unprecedented three Davitt Awards: Best Adult Novel, Best Debut, and Readers' Choice. The second novel in the series is And Fire Came Down.

At CrimeReads, Viskic tagged five top crime novels set in small-town Australia, including:

An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire

An Isolated Incident is a psychological thriller about the murder of a young woman in the small town of Strathdee. The narration alternates between the victim’s sister, Chris, and a young reporter who arrives in town to report on the case. Faced with an insatiable media, Chris tries to makes sense of her loss and the knowledge that anyone in the close-knit town could be the killer. Lyrically written and offering deep insight into the aftermath of violence, An Isolated Incident, was nominated for numerous awards in Australia and is currently taking the UK by storm.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Gordon's ten desert island books

Mary Gordon's novels include Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; her nonfiction includes the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and her collections of short fiction include The Stories of Mary Gordon.

One of her ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

The character of Dorothea Brooke, a gifted woman whose gifts are thwarted by the possibilities available to her, yet who flourishes despite it because of the greatness of her character, the depiction of a woman of passion and intelligence, the tracing of disillusionment in love and marriage — Middlemarch accomplishes all this while creating a vivid world of politics, community, and landscape.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Middlemarch also made Kirsty Gunn's top ten list of books about unrequited love, Jeff Somers's top five memorable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), Lauren Groff's list of six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six classics with supernatural crimes at their center

Robert Masello is a former journalist, TV writer, and the bestselling author of many novels and nonfiction books, many of them supernatural thrillers with a strong historical foundation. They include The Einstein Prophecy, The Jekyll Revelation, The Romanov Cross, The Medusa Amulet, and his most recent work, The Night Crossing.

At CrimeReads Masello tagged "a half dozen of the most famous and influential supernatural novels and the intriguing, even unique, crimes central to their cores," including:

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Crime: Mortgage Fraud

Heathcliff, a man so deprived he only gets the one name, uses his ruthless temperament and financial acuity (gained somewhere in the New World, doing something mysteriously lucrative) to wind up as the owner of both Wuthering Heights, where he was at first brought as an orphan, and ultimately Thrushcross Grange, too, the estate where the love of his life, Catherine Earnshaw, once lived as the wife of the aristocratic Edgar Linton. Published in 1847, under Emily Bronte’s pen name, Ellis Bell, the book stirred up a ton of controversy with its dark, Gothic tone, its lonely ghosts wandering the moors, and its implicit challenges to traditional Victorian notions of morality. Why, Heathcliff even sneaks to the side of Catherine’s open coffin to open the locket around her neck and replace a snip of her husband’s hair with a lock of his own. Talk about chutzpah. The English poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had it just right when he declared Wuthering Heights to be “a fiend of a book…an incredible monster…The action is laid in hell – only it seems people and places have English names there.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on André Aciman's list of five favorite books about the intensity of a once-in-a-lifetime love, Emily Temple's top ten list of literary classics we (not so) secretly hate, Cristina Merrill's list of eight of the sexiest curmudgeons in romance, Kate Hamer's list of six top novels with a strong evocation of atmosphere, Siri Hustvedt's six favorite books list, Tom Easton's top ten list of fictional "houses which themselves seem to have a personality which affects the story," Melissa Harrison's list of the ten top depictions of British rain, Meredith Borders's list of ten of the scariest gothic romances, Ed Sikov's list of eight top books that got slammed by critics, Amelia Schonbek's top five list of approachable must-read classics, Molly Schoemann-McCann's top five list of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the worst wingmen in literature, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Jimmy So's list of fifteen notable film adaptations of literary classics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best thunderstorms in literature, ten of the worst nightmares in literature and ten of the best foundlings in literature, Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages, Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession, and Melissa Katsoulis' top 25 list of book to film adaptations. It is one of John Inverdale's six best books and Sheila Hancock's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six scary stories for Halloween

Daniel Mallory Ortberg is the author of The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror. One of six scary stories or story collections he tagged at the Guardian:

The short story lends itself to horror at least in part because both require an economy of detail. Slowly, Slowly in the Wind is a late-ish Patricia Highsmith collection, published in 1979, and while it’s a little uneven (the work of a miserable mid-century alcoholic 30 years into her career), nasty little treasures such as “Those Awful Dawns” make the journey worth it. This tale is a loosely reworked urban legend – bad, drug-addled parents; an open medicine cabinet; some unloved, curious children – in which dreadful but comic circumstances roll relentlessly downhill.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Curtis Sittenfeld’s ten favorite books

Curtis Sittenfeld’s books include the novels Prep and Eligible and the short-story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. One of her ten desert island books, as shared at Vulture.com:

A Lucky Man, by Jamel Brinkley

This is my newest favorite book. This story collection’s protagonists are men and boys in New York experiencing pain and longing as they go about their daily lives. It’s amazingly insightful and emotionally nuanced.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top examples of sci-fi worldbuilding

John Scalzi's latest novel is The Consuming Fire.

At The Week magazine, he tagged six favorite sci-fi works, including:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992).

Stephenson's vision of a fractured and fragmented United States is both hilariously written and depressing in its accurate depiction of increasing polarization. I don't think Stephenson intended to be a prophet for this crazy age we live in, but he's got the gig anyway.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue