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

Five must-read books on Georgia O’Keeffe

At The Art Newspaper curator Theodora Vischer tagged five must-read books on the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, including:

Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern (2017) by Wanda M. Corn

O’Keeffe’s art and way of life was shaped by a Modernist aesthetic. This is reflected in her wardrobe, as well as the design and furnishings of her two homes in New Mexico. Wanda Corn has researched this decisive unity between art and life and presents her findings in this brilliant, richly illustrated catalogue.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten wintry science fiction and fantasy novels

At BookBub Jeff Somers tagged ten wintry SFF novels, including:

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

In the Russian wilderness of Arden’s story, winter is almost continuous. Within this cold, snowy world Vasya is a young woman who finds friendship and comfort in the spirits that inhabit the nearby forest. This is a world where snow piles up and the old gods regularly walk the local paths. When a new priest arrives in the village, a battle brews between the old and the new, with Vasya right at its center. Arden brings every aspect of her universe into sharp focus — especially the unforgiving Russian winter. In a cold world, your relationship with the world around you is crucial, giving Vasya insight and advantages that others lack as the snow piles up and the ice thickens.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books about basketball

Chris Herring is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He previously spent five years covering the NBA for ESPN and FiveThirtyEight, and prior to that spent seven years at The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the New York Knicks. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in his spare time.

Herring's new book is Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks.

At Publishers Weekly Herring tagged ten of his "favorite basketball reads, many of which helped shape the way [he] went about writing [his] own book." One title on the list:

The Jordan Rules: The Inside Story of One Turbulent Season with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls by Sam Smith

The first penetrating work written on arguably the greatest player of all-time. If someone were to read it now, for the first time, they’d be surprised that many of the things Jordan was defensive about then—particularly his harsh, at times mean-spirited treatment of his teammates—would later become hallmark features of one of the fiercest competitors to ever lace them up.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Follow Chris Herring on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great winter storm thrillers

Heather Gudenkauf is a Edgar Award nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of novels, including The Weight of Silence, These Things Hidden, Not A Sound, This Is How I Lied, and, most recently, The Overnight Guest.

[Coffee with a Canine: Heather Gudenkauf and Maxine; Coffee with a Canine: Heather Gudenkauf & Lolo; My Book, The Movie: Not A Sound; The Page 69 Test: Not A Sound; The Page 69 Test: Before She Was Found; The Page 69 Test: This Is How I Lied]

At CrimeReads Gudenkauf tagged five favorite "thrillers and mysteries where an untimely winter storm takes center stage," including:

No Exit, by Taylor Adams

The very first line of No Exit by Taylor Adams had me hooked. I mean, who hates the iconic holiday song, “White Christmas” so much they tell classic crooner Bing Crosby to do something anatomically impossible two days before Christmas? Thus begins, No Exit. Darby Thorne is driving solo through the mountains of Colorado, desperately trying to get home to Utah and to her mother, who is suffering from late-stage pancreatic cancer before Christmas.

Equipped with only a quarter tank of gas Darby finds herself without cell coverage and in the belly of a raging blizzard that was only getting worse. In search of cell access and a hot cup of coffee, Darby’s only option is to pull over at a rest stop. There Darby meets four strangers, all waiting out the storm. Desperate to get a cell signal to call her mother, Darby goes back into the storm and makes a chilling discovery—a van with a young girl in a cage locked inside. In a race against time and the elements, Darby has only her wits to use as a weapon against an unknown evil.

Read about the other entries on the list.

No Exit is among Rektok Ross's nine top YA survival thrillers and Sophia LeFevre's six top isolated, snowy thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: No Exit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 novels inspired by Greek myths

Susan Stokes-Chapman was born in 1985 and grew up in the historic Georgian city of Lichfield, Staffordshire. She studied for four years at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education & English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing.

Her debut novel, Pandora, was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction prize 2020 as well as longlisted for the Bath Novel Award that same year.

At the Guardian Stokes-Chapman tagged ten books that "have interpreted the Greek myths in different ways, but they are all testament to how these ancient stories have got under our skin." One title on the list:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

This critically acclaimed novel is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad, told from the perspective of Briseis, a Trojan queen who is captured and forced to become the concubine of Achilles. It is a brave, powerful story about survival and resilience, which in no way shies away from the horrors of war and the cruelty women suffered at the hands of their enslavers. There are harrowing scenes including child murder, gang rape and suicide making it a ruthless story, but one that should not be ignored.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Silence of the Girls is among Elodie Harper's six notable novels set in the ancient world, Abbie Greaves's ten top books about silence, and Kris Waldherr's ten favorite books inspired by mythology.

Also see Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five adrenaline pumping YA SFF survival books

Meg Long was born and raised in Louisiana and originally wanted to be a spy. Instead she somehow found herself teaching overseas in China and Malaysia before ending up in Colorado, where it snows entirely too much. She taught middle and high school for eight years before jumping to the tech industry as a content writer. When not reading or writing, she’s kicking things at her Muay Thai gym with her boyfriend, playing video games, or obsessing over Sailor Moon fanart. Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is her debut novel.

At Tor.com Long tagged five favorite YA SFF books that will get your heart racing, including:

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

One of the older books on this list, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s first installment in their Starbound Trilogy is a gripping story about two very different teens. Socialite Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the galaxy while Tarver is a young war hero who came from nothing. But when the spaceliner they’re both on crashes on a deserted planet, they’re the only survivors and no one seems to be coming to save them. Not only will Lilac and Tarver have to figure out a way to survive the empty planet, but also the strange whispers and ghosts haunting their every step. This thrilling and devastatingly romantic story takes the deserted island trope to new extremes that are both heart-racing and heart-wrenching every step of the way.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that explore the blurry boundaries of sibling intimacy

Sara Freeman is a Montreal-born writer currently based out of Boston. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Fiction in 2013.

Freeman's new novel is Tides.

At Lit Hub she tagged six "novels that explore the blurry psychic boundaries of sibling intimacy" including:

Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden

This is the darkest, most claustrophobic of the novels on this list. Four siblings, ranging from ages six to seventeen, go to great lengths to cover up the fact of their mother’s death in order to stay together in their childhood home. Our narrator, Jack, is fifteen and nearly superstitious about his filth. He nurses a fascination for his beautiful older sister, Julie, and masturbates nearly constantly. Time bloats in the stagnant, increasingly malodorous house, and the kitchen, in particular, becomes ‘a place of stench and clouds of flies’. The four children, in their private pact against the outside world, play-act, fight, laugh, and slowly regress to a primitive, feral state. Encouraged by his older sisters, the youngest child, Tom, takes to acting like an infant girl, sleeping in an old cot attached to the eldest sister’s bed. Their eerie idyll is threatened when Derek, Julie’s snooker champion boyfriend enters the frame. This increasingly disquieting story culminates in a fantastically shocking final perversion, which is permanently seared in this reader’s mind. Not for the faint of heart.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Cement Garden is among Jeff Somers's ten literary kids with extremely difficult childhoods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels inspired by true crimes

Steph Mullin is a creative director and Nicole Mabry works in the photography department for a television network. They met as co-workers in New York City in 2012, discovering a shared passion for writing and true crime. After Mullin relocated to Charlotte, NC in 2018, they continued to collaborate. Separated by five states, they spend hours scheming via FaceTime and editing in real time on Google Docs. The Family Tree is the duo’s first crime novel.

[The Page 69 Test: The Family Tree; My Book, The Movie: The Family Tree]

At The Strand Magazine Mullin and Mabry tagged ten novels inspired by true crimes, including:

Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger

Nell Flynn is an FBI agent who returns home to Long Island to scatter her homicide detective father’s ashes. Upon her return, she is thrust into the investigation of the horrific murders of two Latina women. As Nell dives deeper into the case, she begins to suspect the killer may be her own father. And could he have killed her mother years ago? Girls Like Us is inspired by the real-life Gilgo Beach Murders (also known as The Long Island Serial Killer), the still unsolved case of 10-16 bodies that were dismembered and scattered along the South Shore of Long Island. In drawing inspiration from this case, Alger has created a suspenseful and realistic tale, dark and full of twists and turns. (Inspired by The Gilgo Beach Murders, 1996-2010)

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mysteries with southern swampy settings

Stacy Willingham, worked as a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies before deciding to write fiction full time. She earned her BA in Magazine Journalism from the University of Georgia and MFA in Writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Her new novel is A Flicker in the Dark.

At CrimeReads Willingham tagged eight mysteries that feature Southern settings, including:

Down River by John Hart

Down River begins with Adam Chase returning to his hometown of Rowan County, North Carolina. Five years prior, he was narrowly acquitted of a murder charge after the body of a boy was found bludgeoned to death on the banks of a river owned by Adam’s family. Now he’s back for reasons he won’t reveal, and when more bodies start turning up around town and the police begin to narrow in on Adam again, history threatens to repeat itself. Down River features three of my favorite things all wrapped up into one: gorgeously atmospheric writing, a Southern sense of place and complicated familial relationships that make the plot feel both intricate and emotional. You won’t be able to put this one down.

Read about the other mysteries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue