Eight top genre-blending mystery books

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged eight top genre-blending mystery titles. One entry on the list:

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

This sci-fi take on Sherlock Holmes follows an investigator on the trail of a man gone missing from the human colony on Jupiter. Mossa’s investigation takes her to the planet’s university and her ex, a scholar researching Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems. Pleiti and researchers like her have dedicated their lives to exploring the possibility of a return to Earth, but Mossa’s new case could undermine any chance of that. Working together could be the difference between a future among the stars or perhaps even one closer to home.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Mimicking of Known Successes is among Book Riot's best science fiction books of the century (so far).

The Page 69 Test: The Mimicking of Known Successes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Humphrey Hawksley

From my Q&A with Humphrey Hawksley, author of Operation Icebreaker (A Rake Ozenna Thriller, 5):

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Operation Icebreaker takes readers straight in. No tangents. No nuance. The story does what it says on the cover. Operation imagines secrecy, danger mission. Icebreaker projects extreme cold, exactly the environment familiar for protagonist Rake Ozenna to go into action in Arctic Greenland.

What's in a name?

Rake Ozenna comes from a tiny Alaskan settlement on Little Diomede Island that sits on America’s border with Russia. I shortened...[read on]

Visit Humphrey Hawksley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The History Book.

My Book, The Movie: Security Breach.

My Book, The Movie: Man on Ice.

Writers Read: Humphrey Hawksley (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Man on Ice.

The Page 69 Test: Man on Fire.

My Book, The Movie: Operation Icebreaker.

The Page 69 Test: Operation Icebreaker.

Q&A with Humphrey Hawksley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers that blend true crime with a gothic ambience

Tara Goedjen loves anything mysterious. Her books include The Breathless (2017) and No Beauties or Monsters.

[My Book, The Movie: The Breathless; Writers Read: Tara Goedjen (December 2017); The Page 69 Test: The Breathless]

Goedjen's new novel, Please Enjoy Your Stay, is her adult debut.

At CrimeReads Goedjen tagged five thrillers that blend true crime elements with a gothic ambience, including:

Jennifer Fawcett, Beneath the Stairs

This one delves into an (sub)urban legend-type crime in a truly terrifying setting. The murder is chilling: decades ago, a man allegedly killed his family in the “Octagon House,” now abandoned in the woods….

Award-winning playwright and author Jennifer Fawcett delivers glimpses of the tragic crime through the perspective of Clare, who went inside the Octagon House as a teenager with her friend as a prank, and who must now trespass again as an adult. Clare needs to find out why her friend recently tried to commit suicide within its walls, and what exactly she remembers when they first went into the haunted Octagon house all those years ago.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bryant Simon's "For Customers Only"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality by Bryant Simon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Public toilets determine who gets everyday dignity, freedom of movement, and civic belonging―and who doesn’t.

Americans have nowhere to go. Nationwide, countless public spaces lack one crucial thing: bathrooms, never mind ones that are safe and functional. Yet in the past, political leaders celebrated the opening of public bathrooms with boisterous press conferences and showy ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

For Customers Only is the first book to tell the larger history of public bathrooms in the United States, a fascinating story characterized by persistent discrimination, squeamishness about unknown bodies, and disinvestment in public amenities. Acclaimed writer and historian Bryant Simon argues that restrooms aren’t only an architectural feature, but an emblem of control and inequality. In the late nineteenth century, cities vied for the newest and biggest comfort stations to meet the demands of their bustling economies and accommodate a broad and growing public. They built restrooms with gold-domed entrances and ornamented stall doors to inspire cleanliness and order.

But officials soon grew anxious about who might take advantage of this privacy: gay men, the unhoused, and eventually drug users. And as the civil rights movement challenged segregation, officials in the north and south closed public toilets rather than integrate them. By the end of the twentieth century, only people with means could use private bathrooms while out and about―provided they made a purchase at a business. Today, as the fights over trans rights reveal, bathroom access remains a flash point across the country. Meanwhile, some municipalities are again calling for widely available public toilets, but as a tool for economic revitalization, not a public necessity.

The political and cultural history of a squirm-inducing subject, For Customers Only reveals the real and symbolic power of the most ordinary of things. Bathrooms, Simon shows, have always reflected our fragmented national values. Whether these spaces will ever become more accessible and inclusive is ultimately up to us.

Learn more about For Customers Only at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Everything But the Coffee.

The Page 99 Test: For Customers Only.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kathleen Fox reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kathleen Fox, author of Evie Walters Takes the Wheel: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth. The voice alone is worth the read. So is precocious seven-year-old Persephone, who will steal your heart much like she does that of the main character, 81-year-old Elsie—aka Mabel.

Full disclosure: I didn’t love Mabel at first. She’s unfiltered and snarky, but after a few chapters, I’d follow her anywhere. The book is clever, funny, and full of heart, and I’m thrilled that we’re finally seeing some kick-ass older characters rule the...[read on]

About Evie Walters Takes the Wheel, from the publisher:

In this warmhearted and witty debut, a mysterious gift spurs a widow to take a cross-country journey to find its sender―and along the way, she rediscovers herself.

Evie Walters has lived most of her seventy-one years according to others’ expectations. But on the day of her husband’s funeral, she receives an anonymous delivery: an egret orchid. The same flower a Montana ranch hand once gave her decades ago―Novel Daniels, the boy who thought she could do anything.

So now, she does.

Defying her children’s plans to move her into a retirement home, Evie buys a camper van and leaves life in North Carolina abruptly behind. Accompanied by her devoted rescue dog, she heads west to find her cowboy, befriending an unlikely cast of characters along the way. Free-spirited young vanlifers, roadside waitresses, eccentric billionaires, and kindhearted widowers all show Evie a side of life worth living.

But Evie’s drive toward the future takes her back to the past, to memories of the family ranch and childhood dreams. Now, with a second chance as open as the road before her, there’s no telling who Evie Walters will become.

Visit Kathleen Fox's website.

Writers Read: Kathleen Fox.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carla Vass's "The Rally"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Rally: A Novel by Carla Vass.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A young tech entrepreneur―ousted from her start-up and reeling―escapes to Europe for a glamorous car rally, where she must contend with the excesses of the über-rich, betrayal, and love. Perfect for fans of The Wedding People and The White Lotus.

Charlotte "Charlie" Walker has spent the last four years building the dating app Flutter. Despite her own lack of dating experience (!), Flutter is instantly successful. Perhaps too successful. After rejecting the romantic advances of her cofounder, Charlie finds herself unceremoniously ousted. Dispirited, she impulsively joins her BFF on the Rally―an extravagant European road trip featuring luxury cars, lavish parties, and breathtaking destinations.

Although she feels out of place, Charlie embraces her new freedom, indulging in the Rally’s hedonism. But just as she begins to regain her footing, Charlie realizes she can’t outdrive her past: Instead she must reckon with the fallout from her ouster, her company’s buried secrets, and an unexpected attraction that complicates everything.

Visit Carla Vass's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Rally.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty feel-good novels for an instant mood boost

Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead (2019) and First Comes Love (1996; reissued with a new introduction in 2026). Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011.

[Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (December 2009); Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (June 2013); Writers Read: Marion Winik (June 2013)]

A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and People, among others, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Service Award.

At Oprah Daily Winik tagged twenty novels that "provide the perfect literary antidote to a stressful day," including:

The Literati by Susan Coll

From the moment Clemi walks into her office at a Washington, D.C., literary nonprofit, things go wrong. The place has been ransacked, her boss is missing, and a huge cat is sitting on her desk. (Clemi is allergic.) The caterer for the annual fundraising gala, just days away, calls to report the check has bounced. (Bank balance, negatory.) The “public intellectual” who was the centerpiece of the silent auction is no longer available. (Actually, dead.) The novelist to be honored at the event is thankfully still alive, but has an outrageous list of demands. Nobody does crazy comedy of errors like Susan Coll.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Literati.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Hume’s "History of England"

D.W. Buffa was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. After graduation from Michigan State University, he studied under Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey and Hans J. Morgenthau at the University of Chicago where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph. D. in political science. He received his J.D. degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Buffa was a criminal defense attorney for 10 years and his seven Joseph Antonelli novels strive to reflect, from his own experience, what a courtroom lawyer does, the way he (or she) thinks, and the way he feels about what he does.

In Buffa's new novel, Immunity, the President of the United States has ordered the murder of his political opponents—and the Constitution seems powerless to stop him.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series covers David Hume’s History of England. It begins:

In a brief preface to the six volumes of his History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar To The Revolution of 1688, David Hume remarked, “It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore I will be short.” And then he adds, “It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this narrative shall contain little more than the history of my writings; as, indeed all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations.”

Born in 1711, Hume was only twenty-seven when he published his Treatise of Human Nature, which, he reports, “fell deadborn from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots,” by which he means the religious zealots who despised any thought not found in the Bible. Hume’s Treatise did excite, some years later, one reader, Immanuel Kant, who “roused himself from his dogmatic slumbers” to write in reply the Critique of Pure Reason. Hume wrote three more books over the next fourteen years, books that would, each of them, become a permanent part of the small number of works still worth the time and effort of serious study. Then, in 1752, he “formed the plan of writing the History of England.” The first volume...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams; Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand; The Golden Bowl; The Life of George Washington; Tacitus and the dangers of history; The Lost History of the American Constitution; Hume's History of England.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top historical horror novels

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five favorite historical horror novels. One entry on the list:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The most horrifying tales of all are those that draw on the darkest parts of humanity’s past, just as Toni Morrison does in this American classic. Sethe may have escaped from the plantation where she was once enslaved, but the unthinkable cruelties she experienced haunt her still. Her memories aren’t the only thing haunting her and her family, though. The ghost of the unnamed baby she lost has a grip on them, too—and it won’t let Seethe, or her daughter Denver, go without a fight.

Read about other novel on the list.

Beloved also appears on Chandler Morrison's list of five top lightly surreal novels, Hester Musson's top five list of Gothic heroines, Mary Kuryla's list of six works about deeply flawed literary mother figures, Daryl Gregory's list of ten Southern gothic novels that changed the game, Anne Enright's list of six amazing books, Candice Carty-Williams's list of six heroic women in literature, Kate Racculia's list of ten gothic fiction titles that meant something to her, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 1980s, Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric Caplan's "When Healing Harms"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: When Healing Harms: The Doctor Who Put a Hospital on Trial―and the Case That Shook Psychiatry by Eric Caplan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The legal case that changed psychiatry and forced a reckoning within the profession.

In 1979, Dr. Raphael Osheroff admitted himself to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric hospital, expecting world-class care for his severe depression. Instead, he was confined to a locked ward, denied medication, and subjected to seven months of talk therapy. The experience rendered him physically frail and emotionally devastated before his parents secured his transfer to a hospital willing to prescribe the antidepressants he desperately needed. But the damage was done: his marriage, his practice, and his reputation all lay in tatters.

Then he did something unprecedented. He sued Chestnut Lodge.

When Healing Harms excavates the long-buried story behind one of the most consequential―and most misunderstood―malpractice cases in modern psychiatry and surfaces its impact that persists to this day. Drawing on thousands of pages of court transcripts, medical files, legal archives, hundreds of letters, video testimony, and interviews, Eric Caplan provides the definitive account of how a world-renowned psychiatric hospital failed a patient in crisis, and how the story of that failure has been obscured and misrepresented for more than four decades. The result is a revelatory examination of how psychiatry confronted its limitations―and unwittingly gave rise to a system that has failed seriously ill patients even more than the one Osheroff fought to change.

Visit Eric Caplan's website.

The Page 99 Test: When Healing Harms.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books on heroes

Don Mullan is the author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, a book critical in reopening the British government's inquiry (over 25 years later) into what became known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was January 30, 1972, a day when thirteen civilians were killed by British soldiers during a civil rights march in North Ireland.

Paul Greengrass, perhaps better known to Americans as the director of The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and United 93 (2006), made a film (co-produced by Mullan) titled Bloody Sunday (2002) about those events.

In 2006 Mullan named his top ten books on heroes for The Guardian, including:

Rabble-rouser for Peace: The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu by John Allen

In 1982 I helped to organise an international conference on world peace and poverty, to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of St Francis of Assisi. Desmond Tutu, then secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, was one of the first to accept an invitation, subject to the return of his passport, recently confiscated by the apartheid government. I first met him in 1984, the year he won the Nobel peace prize, and we have been friends since. John Allen's biography, due out in October, will undoubtedly be a definitive work for decades to come. Interviewees include former South African presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, and US president Bill Clinton. In 1984 I drove Tutu from Dublin to Belfast and was overwhelmed by his gentleness and generosity. Unquestionably, his compassionate handling of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission checked a potential bloodbath of revenge. A wonderful human being.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elba Luz

From my Q&A with Elba Luz, author of Legally Yours, Violet Lopez:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I hope Legally Yours, Violet Lopez gives readers a good look at what they’re in for! Right away, you know you're getting a story about a girl named Violet, and the word "legally" gives you a little hint about the world you're stepping into. Since it’s YA, I thought weaving that into the title would be interesting, because when you think of legal matters, you tend to think of more adult themes. I wanted that to be a clue into the world of the book. And of course, it’s a play on Legally Blonde, which was a major inspiration for the story. I wanted it to feel like a young adult version of Legally Blonde, but with teenagers holding the reins and the stakes centered around what matters to teens. And of course, "yours" implies a romance, so you're getting a glimpse of almost...[read on]

Visit Elba Luz's website.

Q&A with Elba Luz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top stories of suspense in a seaside house

Peter Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller, among others.

[My Book, The Movie: The Kind Worth Killing; The Page 69 Test: The Kind Worth Killing; Writers Read: Peter Swanson (February 2015)]

Swanson's new book is Do You See What I See?: A Chilling Holiday Mystery Novella of a Celebrity Writer's Christmas Party Gone Wrong.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven great stories of suspense featuring seaside houses. One title on the list:

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

I don’t think this book is commonly thought of as a classic house-by-the-sea novel. But the whole first half of this timeless novel has Tom Ripley insinuating himself into the life of Dickie Greenleaf, who is currently idling away at his summer home in the imagined village of Mongibello on the Italian coast. I love the details of the small villa, the martini lunches, the steep walk down to the beach. And from all that sunlight and bliss Highsmith moves the story into her typically dark, murderous territory.

Read about another title on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Elizabeth Arnott's list of six top atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves, Adam Hamdy's list of ten of the most popular literary antiheroes, Nadia Khomami's list of five of the best psychological thrillers by women, the UK-based Crime Writers' Association's list of ten page-turning reads, Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Barbara Young Welke's "Writing with Fire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life by Barbara Young Welke.

About the book, from the publisher:

A cultural and legal history intertwined with a deeply emotional meditation on the course of life, memory, and the documents that define us.

During the 1940s and 1950s, an untold number of American children suffered devastating injuries when the fur-like fabric on the chaps of their Gene Autry–branded cowboy playsuits exploded into flame. Barbara Young Welke was researching this history when her teenage daughter unexpectedly died.

The shock of Welke’s loss transformed her understanding of the children and their families. Her experience also led her to question the norms of scholarship and of writing. Historians are trained to separate the personal from the intellectual, to be suspicious of emotion. These and other norms are embedded in and reinforced by the calling card of academics, the curriculum vitae. Welke wondered how that cold document―with its literal meaning, “the course of life”―had become a form that excludes so much of what gives life meaning. What impact did that have on what we know, how we know it, and how we understand ourselves? Similarly, Welke wondered, what might we see if we looked at the history of the cowboy suit tragedy as more than a matter of lawsuits brought by grieving families? Here, Welke traces the making, marketing, and selling of the cowboy suits; the lengths the defendants went to avoid and limit liability; and the meaning of the injuries, deaths, and legal settlements in the course of these children’s and families’ lives.

Writing with Fire interweaves the histories of the cowboy suit tragedy and the curriculum vitae. Grounded in archival and legal research, oral histories, and letters Welke wrote her daughter following her death, Welke offers an inimitable examination of trauma, law, autobiography, and identity. The result is revelatory and unforgettable: a provocative historical reflection on life and death, depression and war, markets and families, law, power, and precarity in modern America.

Learn more about Writing with Fire at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Writing with Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David McGlynn's "Liberal Arts"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Liberal Arts: A Novel by David McGlynn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A kaleidoscopic novel-in-stories set at a fictional Midwest college

Two centuries old and covered in ivy, Wisconsin’s Buchanan College is populated by an eclectic mix of students, staff, and professors hailing from the nearby suburbs to the far corners of the globe. From the outside, Buchanan seems an idyllic world of higher learning. Yet behind its bucolic exterior, a series of interconnected dramas play out: a slew of first-year students mysteriously disappear within days of moving in; an injured hockey star discovers an unlikely fountain of youth; an alumna returns to campus after fifty years in the hope of reconnecting with a former love. And throughout the novel we follow the story of Jenny Ramirez, a social worker and the wife of a popular professor, who commits an act that alters how the college sees her, and how she sees herself. Over a span of four years, from orientation to graduation, the characters in Liberal Arts are forced to weigh their ideals and aspirations against the harsh and often ridiculous realities of the world, and are left asking what, if anything, a liberal arts education has left to teach them.

Visit David McGlynn's website.

Writers Read: David McGlynn (September 2025).

Q&A with David McGlynn.

The Page 69 Test: Everything We Could Do.

The Page 69 Test: Liberal Arts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best books about haunted houses

Lorna Wallace has a PhD in English Literature and is a lover of all things science fiction and horror. She lives in Scotland with her rescue greyhound, Misty.

At Mental Floss Wallace tagged eight top books about haunted houses, including:

A House with Good Bones (2023) // T. Kingfisher

Sam Montgomery is on a break from work and is looking forward to an extended stay with her mom, but her brother has warned her that something seems off. When she arrives, she finally understands what he means: vultures are circling the property, the whole house has been redecorated, and her mom is being unusually jumpy and sensitive. Sam decides to get to the bottom of what’s going on and soon discovers that a mean-spirited specter is involved—but don’t expect this to be a classic haunting, because things get very weird.

T. Kingfisher—which is a pseudonym used by Ursula Vernon—won two awards for best horror novel for A House with Good Bones: the 2023 Dragon Award and the 2024 Locus Award.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Natalie Kikić

From my Q&A with Natalie Kikić, author of The Haunting of Lavender House: A Haunting, Gothic Story of Croatian Folklore:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title of my book, The Haunting of Lavender House, does an excellent job introducing readers to my story, but it’s actually not my original title. For years, while I was writing the novel, I called it House of Lavender. While I like the simplicity of it, it doesn’t really communicate the gothic elements of my story—the house in my novel is haunted, you see. And so, my publishing team introduced the new and current title, which I love. It evokes other gothic horror tales, such as The Haunting of Hill House. And it still keeps the lavender element, which is common flower along the coastal region of Croatia, where my story is set. So in the end, my title is...[read on]

Visit Natalie Kikić's website.

Q&A with Natalie Kikić.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top witchy mysteries and thrillers

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. At Book Riot she tagged eight books that "are either intriguing mysteries or absorbing thrillers, and they’re all brimming with magic." One title on the list:

River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Givhan

When her husband is arrested for the murder of a friend, Eva’s life is thrown off kilter. Soon, she’s questioning everyone she knows, including herself. Now, Eva must use her magick as a bruja to protect the ones she loves.

Read about another entry on the list.

River Woman, River Demon is among Rey Rowland's top six top speculative thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: River Woman, River Demon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Livia K. Stone's "Without Masters"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Without Masters: Autogestión, Anarchist Ethics, and Mexico City Punk by Livia K. Stone.

About the book, from the publisher:

Without Masters is an anthropological history of the radical ethical and political principle of autogestión as it traveled around the world in the twentieth century and came to be popularized in Mexico City in the early 2000s. A political term that first arose in 1962 Algeria traveled across continents until it landed in Mexico City’s anarcho-punk scene in the 1980s, where it eventually came to be associated more with zines, music, art, and Zapatismo than with its origins in anarchism or syndicalism. Without Masters brings the true history of autogestión and the quiet radicalism of Mexico City’s autogestive collectives to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Along the way, Stone brings together diverse materials, from punk zines and political fliers to Beat novels and Zapatista parables, that tell an alternate history of radical politics throughout the world in the second half of the twentieth century which serves as a reminder of Mexico’s formative role in the creation of modern social theory.

Learn more about Without Masters at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Without Masters.

--Marshal Zeringue