The most surprising thrillers ever written

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer — in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree.

At Book Riot she tagged the six most surprising thrillers ever written, including:

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

Jennifer Hillier made a name for herself writing dark, twisty thrillers. In Jar of Hearts, she not only delivers on the shocking twist department but also on the popular fictional serial killer trope.

As a wealthy 30-year-old executive, Geo Shaw should be living the high life. Instead, her high school best friend’s body has finally been found, so she’s going to prison. But with a string of new murders with messages left on their bodies, the question is, does Geo know more than she’s revealed?

Read about the other thrillers on the list.

Jar of Hearts is among Tessa Wegert's five crime novels about troubled teens, Emily Smith's five top thrillers featuring the dead/surviving girl trope, B. R. Myers's top ten quietly effective suspense novels, and Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through the winter storms.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that bear witness to Latin America’s Dirty Wars

Jahia de Rose is an antillana-deutsch artist, landworker, writer, and scholar. Her bylines appear in Electric Literature, midnight + indigo (forthcoming), PetitMort, Business Insider, and several indie publications. She is at work on a novel and her first memoir. She blogs on Substack as @autumnwildroses, and her Substack publication ‘Roadworthy’ chronicles her off-grid life on the road in Europe.

At Electric Lit the writer tagged seven "works of historical fiction about events in [Latin America and the Caribbean] which touch on the Dirty Wars." One title on the list:

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

After her father’s involvement in a failed plot to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960, Julia Alvarez and her family fled to New York. She memorialized the thirty-year dictatorship and Dominican resistance to tyranny through the real-life activist Mirabal sisters—Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa—who were known as Las Mariposas, The Butterflies. Cycling through the perspectives of all the sisters, the book begins and ends with Dede, who chose not to join her sisters’ guerrilla activities. Drawing on themes of class, gender, family dynamics, and survivor’s guilt, the book follows the Mirabals as they develop into revolutionaries. Ironically, though Dede did not want to be involved, she is the one who keeps the memory of their bravery in the face of tyranny and patriarchy alive. Perhaps that is Alvarez’s metaphor for how we cannot escape being a part of the revolution in the end, no matter how much we try.

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six memoirs that make grief feel less lonely

Charley Burlock is the Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns stories on all things literary. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, the Apple News Today podcast, and elsewhere.

At Oprah Daily Burlock tagged "six memoirs that make grief feel a tiny bit less lonely," including:

Things in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li

Mothers who outlive their children often inhabit a world of hushed silences and euphemisms. Written in the aftermath of losing both of her teenage children to suicide, Li’s memoir strides confidently through a territory we are told to tiptoe in and fills a void of language with booming insight. A few days after James, Li’s nineteen-year-old son, took his life using the same method that his brother had six years before, the acclaimed author told a friend, half-jokingly, that she would “write a self-help book about radical acceptance.” The book she ended up writing could hardly be classified as “self-help.” As Li warns the reader early on, it “will not provide the easy satisfaction of fulfillment, inspiration, and transformation.” But these pages—refreshingly absent of platitudes, false optimism, or an ounce of self-pity—provide something far more useful: a vision of maternal grief that is both unvarnished and, ultimately, survivable.

Read about the other memoirs on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that reveal the dark sides of fame

Jessie Garcia is an award-winning sports journalist who has risen the ranks in television news, first as an anchor/reporter, then to newsroom management. She is the News Director at the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee. She also taught journalism at four universities. A native of Madison, WI, Garcia has two adult sons and resides in Milwaukee with her husband, dog and cat.

Garcia's new novel is The Fair Weather Friend.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite thrillers that explore the dark sides of fame. One title on the list:

Catherine Steadman, The Disappearing Act

A British actress named Mia comes to Hollywood to try out for a variety of screen roles. She meets a fellow actress at an audition and agrees to plug the parking meter for her, but when that actress vanishes without a trace, Mia decides to investigate on her own. Little does she know how this will take her deep into a world of tinsel town secrets.

This was another audiobook I happily hopped into at every available chance. The premise was spooky and the twists unforeseen.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten perfect books to gift this Valentine’s Day

One title on Tertulia's list of books that make a perfect Valentine’s Day gift:

Felicity: Poems
Mary Oliver

This stunning collection of poems captures the delicate beauty of love, nature, and connection. Described by the New York Times Book Review as “genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring,” it's the perfect gift to warm your Valentine’s heart.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight historical mysteries with pirates & smugglers

Linda Wilgus grew up in the Netherlands and lived in Italy, Belgium, and the United States before settling in England. A graduate of the University of Amsterdam, she worked as a bookseller and a knitting pattern designer before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines. Wilgus shares her home with her husband, three children, and their dog.

[The Page 69 Test: The Sea Child; Q&A with Linda Wilgus]

The Sea Child is Wilgus's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "eight cracking reads about smugglers, pirates and mutineers." One title on the list:

Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

After Eva loses her movie star sister, she returns to Cornwall where they spent their childhood summers, planning to/ in order to scatter her sister’s ashes. But the house Eva used to stay at as a child, Trelowarth, turns out to be a portal between our modern time and the eighteenth century, when smuggler brothers Jack and Daniel Butler lived there.

Soon, Eva is caught up in the brothers’ lives and finds herself falling for Daniel. As if their smuggling operation doesn’t put them enough at risk already, the brothers are also involved in the Jacobite cause, and danger eventually arrives at their (and Eva’s) door. Steeped in smuggling history, this deliciously romantic timeslip novel is a must-read for those who enjoy historical fiction set in Cornwall’s colorful past.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers about secrets and lies

Isabelle Popp's first attempt at writing a romance novel came in middle school, when she began a story about a weirdo girl who could photosynthesize. That project was abandoned, but she has plenty of other silly ideas in the hopper. When she isn't reading or writing, she's probably knitting, solving crossword puzzles, or scouring used book stores for vintage Gothic romance paperbacks. Originally from New York, she's as surprised as anyone that she lives in Indiana. Let's Give 'Em Pumpkin to Talk About is her first novel.

At Book Riot Popp tagged six "compelling thrillers about secrets and lies." One title on the list:

Who Knows You by Heart by C.J. Farley

Would you take a mysterious but lucrative job if it meant finally paying off some debts? That’s what Octavia Crenshaw did. Eustachian Inc. specializes in audio entertainment, and they pay much better than the nonprofit sector ever did. So what if they have an entire secret floor of their corporate headquarters? When Octavia is pulled into working on a secret project with another coder, she begins to learn things about her employer that she can no longer ignore. If you like thrillers with a touch of romance, this is the one to pick up.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten thrillers and suspense novels for fans of "His & Hers" and "Tell Me Lies"

At People magazine senior books editor Lizz Schumer tagged ten thrillers and suspense novels for fans of His & Hers and Tell Me Lies. One title on the list:

Both Can Be True by Jessica Guerrieri

The Gilmore sisters have drifted apart. Frankie is the funny one, full of restless energy and sharp edges. Now a bookstore owner who has been sober for years, she avoids her past as much as she does alcohol.

Mere is the steady one, the caretaker, a mother quietly unraveling from the loneliness of her marriage and the strain of raising a neurodivergent daughter. When a woman in Frankie’s social circle disappears, the sisters are unexpectedly forced to confront their past, and with it, the unspoken trauma of sexual violence and the vices they turned to in order to survive their fractured bond.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Q&A with Jessica Guerrieri.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about Ohio

Lauren Schott was born in Akron, Ohio, and is a graduate of Duke University. She has spent twenty-five years working in publishing. Very Slowly All at Once is her first novel for adults. She currently lives in Henley-on-Thames, UK, with her family.

At Lit Hub Schott tagged six books that "show, even the darker side of life in Ohio offers up rich lives worth examining." One title on the list:

Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible

In Sittenfeld’s modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice, a sprawling Tudor in an upscale Cincinnati neighborhood stands in for Longbourne in Hertfordshire. Both places could seem a bit boring, until the Bennet sisters and their suitors show up. Like her Georgian counterpart, Liz Bennet in 2013 enjoys being out in the fresh air, and her long runs offer both an opportunity to encounter Mr Darcy (here a brain surgeon from San Francisco) and showcase the local sites, including the famed Skyline Chili. It’s not Georgian England and it’s not Manhattan, where Liz had been living until her father had a heart attack and she had to return to Cincy, but this country-club-centered version of Ohio still feels high society enough to carry the original novel’s preoccupations with class, marriage, and what everyone will think of you forward into our millennium.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five historical fiction books about resistance

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 historical fiction books [which] depict resistance against violence and authoritarianism in many forms." One entry on the list:

The Woman With No Name by Audrey Blake

A middle-aged woman overlooked by everyone around her is recruited by British Intelligence to become their first female sabotage agent in France. Yvonne Rudellat thinks her life is over when her apartment is bombed, but somehow she survives. With her home in Britain destroyed and her childhood home of France under Nazi rule, Yvonne decides it’s time to fight back. But no one believes a middle-aged woman will do any good for the war effort, even on the home front. It’s exactly that attitude that will make her the perfect undercover agent. The book is based on the life of a real woman who fought in the French Resistance during WWII, a fact which her family only learned after her death.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women who lose the plot

Sara Levine is the author of the novels The Hitch and Treasure Island!!! and the short story collection Short Dark Oracles. She earned a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Brown University and was awarded a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities.

Levine teaches creative writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and on Substack at Delusions of Grammar.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven novels that "celebrate reckless speed, dizzying intensity, audacious rudeness, and the abandonment of social norms." One title on the list:

Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin

One day Iris, a writing instructor, receives a package containing documents from her teenage years: a play she wrote and two letters from her father, blaming her for the family’s ruin. After complaining to her friend Ray, who is about to have top surgery, Iris swaps her mildewy house for Ray’s doddering Subaru and drives off to the countryside. Did I mention the trip is poorly planned? Iris suffers from an autoimmune disease, and the funniest parts of this funny American book are the dialogues between Iris’s aching feet, whom she has named Bouvard and Pécuchet (after two characters in an unfinished Flaubert novel). The Subaru dies, and Iris lands in a field where she is stepped on by a herd of cows, then winds up working as a cowherd for a sexy lady who probably murdered her own husband and now operates a museum that’s only open one month a year. Then the story really goes off the rails.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top Southern Gothic novels

Mark Murphy is a native of Savannah, Georgia. He's worked as a fast-food worker, marine biologist, orderly, ordained minister, and gastroenterologist, his current "day job." When he's not healing the sick, he writes anything he can-newspaper columns, short stories, magazine articles, and textbook chapters.

Rose Dhu is his third novel.

At The Nerd Daily Murphy tagged seven novels in the Southern Gothic tradition that inspired hi. One entry on the list:

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)

Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in western Virginia, moves to Mississippi in the 1830s. Ruthlessly pragmatic, he wishes to rise above his nondescript beginnings through the product of his own formula, which he terms his “design.” He builds an ostentatious plantation (Sutpen’s Hundred), takes a wife and embarks on a quest for an heir. His obsessive search for power, status and immortality, driven by pride and scarred by past humiliation, is ultimately undermined by his lack of empathy and inherent blindness to the human costs of his own design. Presented in fragmented fashion, largely through other characters’ recollections and with conflicting, sometimes unreliable narratives, this is a challenging read, but Faulkner himself said it was “the greatest novel of the 20th Century.” Many critics agree.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Absalom, Absalom! also appears Nicola DeRobertis-Theye's list of five notable novels of biographical detection, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books list, Jacket Copy's list of sixty-one essential postmodern reads, Sarah Churchwell's list of six books on the American Deep South, and Thomas Perry's favorite books list.

--Marshal Zeringue