The best geopolitical thrillers from today’s headlines

Why am I passionate about this?

Three people changed my life: my grandfather, a self-taught naturalist, the cardiac surgeon I worked for to put myself through college, and a nuclear engineer I worked for at Los Alamos National Labs. Summering on an island in northern Ontario I was immersed in a world with minimal human impact. As an exploration geologist, I traveled the world and saw first-hand the impact humankind is having on our world. My books focus on man’s threats and dangers to our world—be they environmental, medical or the threat of weapons of mass destruction.


I wrote...

The Paris Contagion

By C.A. Farlow,

Book cover of The Paris Contagion

What is my book about?

Global terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and a deadly new virus all combine to threaten the world’s safety, particularly for CIA analyst Colonel Samantha Michaels and for Captain Cassandra Stanley, captain of a US Navy guided missile cruiser. Fears mount as more weapons are tested by North Korea’s Supreme Leader just as a deadly pandemic again sweeps through the world’s population. When North Korean missiles, capable of reaching the United States, are tested, it’s clear the Supreme Leader must be stopped. Can an alliance be formed to do this? Ripped from today’s news headlines, The Paris Contagion spans the globe.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Category Five

C.A. Farlow Why did I love this book?

Threats to our world are not limited to those created by despots, terrorists, and weapons of mass destruction.

Climate change and associated global warming may be the biggest threat as sea levels rise as polar ice melts, threatening coastal environments. Increases in sea temperature fuel ever larger and more powerful storms and weather systems. Donlay captures this threat in Category Five, Hurricane Helena is growing into the greatest storm ever recorded.

Eco-watch races to save the scientists who are studying the storm. This amazing thriller combines climate change with intrigue, suspense with death threats. Can they defuse a storm great than Category Five?

By Philip Donlay,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Category Five as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Best-Selling and Award-Winning Author

When the only option is to maneuver a crippled plane into the calm eye of a category five hurricane

In the Atlantic Ocean, Hurricane Helena is gathering strength, becoming the most powerful storm in recorded history. As Helena bears down on Bermuda, Donovan Nash, along with other members of the scientific research organization Eco-Watch, are called to fly in and extract key government people who have been studying Helena.

For Donovan, the routine mission turns deadly when an attempt is made on the life of the lead scientist. A woman from the past, Dr. Lauren McKenna,…


Book cover of The Hunt for Red October

C.A. Farlow Why did I love this book?

This classic political thriller has a CIA operative gathering information as the US tries to stop a renegade Russian nuclear submarine headed for the east coast of the United States.

Jack Ryan knows the captain of the boat. He’s met the man in Moscow. He knows his history and life story. He knows he’s not a threat. Can he convince his superiors, the President of the United States and the Captain of the hunter-killer submarine USS Dallas that the Russian sub is not a threat before the Russian hunt and kill the Red October?

By Tom Clancy,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Hunt for Red October as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Also Available as an Audio Edition from Audible

Tom Clancy's rich imagination and his remarkable grasp of the capabilities of advanced technology give this novel an amazing ring of authenticity. It is a thriller with a new twist, a "military procedural" with an ingenious, tightly woven plot that revolves around the defection of a Soviet nuclear submarine--the USSR's newest and most valuable ship, with its most trusted and skilled officer at the helm.

A deadly serious game of hide-and-seek is on. The entire Soviet Atlantic Fleet is ordered to hunt down the submarine and destroy her at all costs. The…


Book cover of Never

C.A. Farlow Why did I love this book?

Never combines it all. This fast-paced, hold-your-breath thriller features a young intelligence operative, a spy, a spymaster from China, and a US President falling in the polls as a new election nears.

This story is frighteningly realistic as the protagonists struggle to prevent the next world war. Chemical weapons are stockpiled and prepared for use. Readers are thrust into a true-to-life scenario here the world teeters on the brink of destruction.

By Ken Follett,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Never as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestseller

The new must-read epic from master storyteller Ken Follett: more than a thriller, it’s an action-packed, globe-spanning drama set in the present day.
 
“A compelling story, and only too realistic.” —Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary

“Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn’t get fixed.” So says Pauline Green, president of the United States, in Follett’s nerve-racking drama of international tension.
 
A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country’s secret stash of deadly chemical poisons: all these play roles in a relentlessly…


Book cover of The Da Vinci Code

C.A. Farlow Why did I love this book?

No one does it better than Brown at weaving a tale as complex and perplexing as the symbols, puzzles, and labyrinths within the story.

His reluctant hero, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon must combat a hidden threat while trying to decrypt clues left by Da Vinci in his various paintings and monographs. The story features a secret society—the Priory of Sion.

This ancient society, whose members reach back to Da Vinci, is protecting a historical secret that stretches back to the time of Christ. Can Langdon and co-protagonist Sophie Neveu crack the ‘code’ and stop their deadly competition before the authorities catch them?

Join these two uncommon heroes and explore Western culture’s greatest mysteries.

By Dan Brown,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked The Da Vinci Code as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes.

As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history.

Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the…


Book cover of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

C.A. Farlow Why did I love this book?

When is a thriller not fiction? When the gene-editing procedures of CRISPR are discoverers and shared with the world.

This biography of one of the discoveries of CRISPR is non-fiction but has the same page-turning, stay-up all-night focus of the best thriller out there. CRISPR babies—whose DNA is edited in vitro, the ethics of single-cell organism experiments to applications on eukaryotic cells. This biography has it all.

Released as the SARs-COv2 pandemic rages around the world, hints of how CRISPR can lend humanitarian aid. But what is the dark side of this simple, easily obtained, inexpensive methodology?

By Walter Isaacson,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The Code Breaker as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns.

In 2012, Nobel Prize winning scientist Jennifer Doudna hit upon an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA.

Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies.

But what does that mean for humanity? Should we be hacking our own DNA to make us less susceptible to disease? Should…


You might also like...

Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

Book cover of Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

Patrick G. Cox Author Of Ned Farrier Master Mariner: Call of the Cape

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required.  In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.

Patrick's book list on the Battle of Jutland

What is my book about?

Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.

When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.

Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

What is this book about?

The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in China, submarines, and presidential biography?

10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about China, submarines, and presidential biography.

China Explore 576 books about China
Submarines Explore 35 books about submarines
Presidential Biography Explore 18 books about presidential biography