The First Stop for Literature Lovers
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Kurt Vonnegut‘s extensive bibliography isn’t short on bestsellers, but I see many people overlooking his first novel, Player Piano, which seems a little strange considering how well it resonates with modern times. It tells the story of an engineer, Paul Prodeus, living in a totally automated American society in the future, increasingly desperate to find some true meaning to his life.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Michael Crichton, unlike most authors, has managed to pen multiple classics over the course of his lifetime, many of which were turned into equally-celebrated motion pictures. The Great Train Robbery is one of his better-known works, taking us to London 1855 to embark on an adventure alongside Edward Pierce as he orchestrates the crime of the century.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
John E. Douglas is perhaps one of the more important figures in modern criminal psychology, being not only one of the first profilers, but more importantly, one of the only ones willing and able to consistently share his knowledge with the public. He has published many books alongside Mark Olshaker, and in Mindhunter, Douglas delves into some of the more surprising and shocking cases throughout his storied twenty-five-year career.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Alistair MacLean is perhaps one of the more cinematic authors out there, with his novels always being evocative and, as has been proven on numerous occasions, great for movie adaptations. The Guns of Navarone is arguably one of his better-known works across both literature and cinema, and it tells the story of a small group of saboteurs tasked with the seemingly pointless and impossible mission of destroying an artillery installation preventing the evacuation of 1200 British soldiers.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Carlos Ruiz Zafon has single-handedly put his beloved city of Barcelona on the map as the perfect setting for mysteries basking in the eternal lights of art, history, and literature. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is, without a doubt, the series which best exemplifies the author’s adoration of his hometown as well as his literary prowess. In the second novel, titled The Angel’s Game, he takes us back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to meet a young pulp fiction writer whose life is about to change for both the worst, and the best.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Herman Hesse is an author whose literature can be best-described, in my opinion, as profoundly introspective, affording each and every person it touches the tools to peer further within themselves. Steppenwolf is one of his most popular and influential novels, telling the story of Harry Haller, a profoundly sad and lonely individual struggling to reconcile the civil and primeval halves of his own identity.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
L.T. Vargus and Tim McBain have created their own standout series in the mystery genre, following FBI profiler Violet Darger on one deadly manhunt after the next. In the third book of the series, titled The Girl in the Sand, she sees herself summoned to Las Vegas following a grizzly discovery, one which puts her in the crosshairs of a legendary serial killer bearing a personal grudge against her.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Peter Benchley has left his mark on the worlds of literature, cinema, and ocean activism, but few of his works have withstood the test of time in the way Jaws has. The novel takes place on a seaside resort on the south shore of Long Island, where a giant killer shark begins to make minced meat of the swimmers. Despite political and personal conflicts swirling around them, three men decide to undertake the perilous journey to send the shark back to the depths it came from.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Mary Beth Keane writes the sort of fiction which digs a little deeper than your typical thrillers and mysteries, often exploring some of the greyer areas in our lives. In The Half Moon, she tells us the story of Malcolm and Jess Gephardt, a couple faced with a rather uncertain future, one where their dreams and life aspirations might be extinguished for good.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
John Marrs is a name most thriller fans are familiar with, having penned numerous bestsellers which still stand tall to this very day. In The Good Samaritan, one of his better-known works, he tells the story of Laura, a woman who abuses her position as a suicide hotline operator to push people over the edge. However, one man has seen beyond the veil, and is closing in on her sinister nature, unaware that she’ll do just about anything to stay in the shadows.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Mario Escobar has, on many occasions, managed to profoundly penetrate some of the more difficult and gut-wrenching topics in recent history, a feat he repeats once again with The Librarian of Saint-Malo. The story takes place in France, 1939, and follows Jocelyn, the titular librarian, as she tries to save the books and people of her beloved coastal village as it falls prey to Nazi occupation.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Emile Zola is a name most people are familiar with, even those who haven’t read his works. Objectively one of the greatest authors in our short history, his novels always had the ability to move people, and have been consistently doing so for over a hundred and fifty years. In Germinal, one of his more famous works, he tells the story of Etienne Lantier, a clever and unemployed machinist who eventually stirs a mining community to a strike unlike any other, threatening to open the first cracks in a rotten and unjust world order.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Jonathan Eig is primarily known for writing about sports figures, but in his most recent book, titled King: A Life, he veers off the familiar path to explore the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The first major biography of the man written in decades, it explores his personal, political and religious life, the many demons he had to wrestle with, and even includes new information from recently-declassified FBI documents.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Jo Nesbo made his name overseas with the Harry Hole series, more specifically the ones which take place in Norway, the main character’s home country. It took publishers a fairly long time to translate the first novel of the series, The Bat, which uncharacteristically takes us to Australia, where Harry Hole finds himself working as an observer for the police following the murder of a young Norwegian woman.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Timothy Egan has long-ago immersed himself in the racial history of the United States of America, having authored numerous articles and books on the subject over the course of his life. In 2023 he published another important work in his long line of investigations, titled A Fever in the Heartland. In it, he investigates the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920 under the leadership of D.C. Stephenson, its growth as an organization, and downfall at the hands of a deathbed confession.