Ten top holidays in fiction

Emma Straub is the author of the novels The Vacationers and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. One of her top ten holidays in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Because sociopaths like to take holidays too! Highsmith's much-loved villain heads to Italy in this novel, where he follows and then kills a high-born man he pretends to know from school. I don't know whether Facebook has made this sort of thing easier or more difficult. Easier, I fear. Watch out when someone claims to have taken English class with you in grade 10.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on 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