Seven crime books that challenge notions of inherent female goodness

Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at several universities.

Her short stories and flash fiction appear in more than one hundred journals worldwide. Recognition includes the Bath Flash Fiction Award short list, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple other awards. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband.

Dalcher's latest novel is Femlandia.

At CrineReads she tagged seven recent books that challenge the "traditional world view that the fairer sex is, well, fairer." One title on the list:

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage — Hanna Jensen

Move over, Bad Seed. There’s a new girl in town, the daddy-adoring, selectively-mute, seven-year-old Hanna, who works devilishly hard to get her mother out of the way. Part horror, part psychological thriller, and part commentary on the challenges a couple faces when their family unit expands, Stage’s debut is perfectly plotted and incredibly tense. The reader is tempted to feel sympathy for poor little psychopathic Hanna, but she’s just so nasty (see the thumbtack scene) that we all breathe a collective sigh of relief when Mommy and Daddy finally fight back.

Read about another entry on the list.

Baby Teeth is among May Cobb's five psychological thrillers featuring single-minded villains & anti-heroes, Jae-Yeon Yoo's top ten books about the promise & perils of alternative schooling, Pamela Crane's five top novels featuring parenting gone wild, Damien Angelica Walters's five titles about the horror of girlhood, and Sally Hepworth's eight messed up fictional families.

--Marshal Zeringue