Liz French

Family stories, trailblazing actors and activists, a wedding crasher, and more populate these engaging novels.

Moving memoirs, historical accounts, lively performing arts books, and scientific inquiries number among these real-world reads.

Best Books is almost here! On December 2 we announce our winning titles. To celebrate we are counting down to our big reveal by highlighting some of our 2023 picks, titles we still treasure, reread, and suggest widely. This week, in advance of Thanksgiving, we offer two choices, a van life adventure and a cozy-adjacent crime fiction debut.

Notaro’s historical crime novel The Murderess fictionalizes the notorious case of Winnie Ruth Judd, who in 1931 murdered her two best friends and placed their bodies in trunks. The grisly crime was discovered when Judd attempted to ship the trunks via train from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Notaro tells LJ about Phoenix’s “boogeyman,” her research work, and how it feels to get inside a murderess’s head.