Readers share recent favorites

Readers on X are swapping recent book picks that cut across myth retellings, thrillers, fantasy mysteries and nonfiction about misinformation. The cluster of titles includes Ayana Gray’s *I, Medusa*, Kellye Garrett’s *Missing White Woman*, Robert Jackson Bennett’s *The Tainted Cup* and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young’s *Wrong*. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (hachettebookgroup.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) (amazon.com) *I, Medusa* was published on November 18, 2025, by Random House, and recasts Medusa as a young heroine rather than a stock monster from Greek myth. Penguin Random House lists the novel at 336 pages and describes it as a villain-origin story from Gray, whose earlier work includes the *Beasts of Prey* series. (penguinrandomhouse.com) *Missing White Woman* arrived on April 30, 2024, from Mulholland Books, with Garrett building the story around a woman who finds a body in a rental home while her boyfriend disappears. Hachette says the novel examines friendship, racial bias and social media inside a commercial thriller plot. (hachettebookgroup.com) *The Tainted Cup*, published February 6, 2024, by Del Rey, blends detective fiction with secondary-world fantasy in the first installment of Bennett’s *Shadow of the Leviathan* series. Penguin Random House says the book pairs a murder investigation with an empire threatened by giant sea creatures and engineered biology. (penguinrandomhouse.com) *Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation* was published October 17, 2023, by Johns Hopkins University Press. The book argues that false beliefs spread through identity and media incentives as much as through bad facts alone, according to the publisher description. (amazon.com) (books.google.com) The mix of titles shows readers moving easily between fiction built on old stories and nonfiction aimed at current political and media habits. In one short list, myth retelling sits next to domestic suspense, fantasy procedural and an academic trade book on why people accept misinformation. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (hachettebookgroup.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) (books.google.com) The thread also lines up with how publishers are positioning these books: Gray’s novel as a feminist myth remix, Garrett’s as a sharp crime story about race and attention, Bennett’s as a genre hybrid, and Young’s as a broad diagnosis of American misinformation. Those categories help explain why the recommendations travel well on social platforms, where readers often trade one-sentence hooks before they trade reviews. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (kellyegarrett.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) (publishersweekly.com) None of the books come from the same lane, and that is the point of the roundup. A reader scrolling past these recommendations gets four distinct entry points: a myth rewritten, a missing-person thriller, a fantastical murder case and a study of how people come to believe things that are not true. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (hachettebookgroup.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) (books.google.com)