Here are 100 books that Adam's Witness fans have personally recommended if you like
Adam's Witness.
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This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
I stumbled over this book and soon found myself hooked. It’s a romance, yes, but the research into conflict and its effects put it up there on my list of thrillers. It’s not strictly speaking a thriller, it’s more of a military action story and romance, but the characters are wonderful. The way they react to the war zone conflict, the effect it has on the unit and the reporter embedded with them, it has a wonderful ring of truth. And that’s what I’m always looking for in a good romance, the ring of truth. You have to really feel the RPGs coming in, and Garrett does an amazing job of making you really feel it.
There are a hundred reasons why falling for a gorgeous, tattooed soldier is a terrible idea. An office romance with tanks and guns?
No thanks.
Besides, Connor Regan has other things on his mind. After his brother’s death, he finds himself bound for Iraq to embed with an elite SAS team. He sets his boots on the ground looking for closure and solace—anything to ease the pain of James’s death.
Instead he finds Sergeant Thompson—a moody, inked Adonis with a sinfully rare smile.
Nat is a veteran commander, hardened by years of combat and haunted by the loss of his…
I’ve had a long career, publishing books that have won the highest awards in the industry, including two books that won Caldecott Medals. I’m best known as the editor of the Harry Potter books. But my expertise in this area also comes from being a father, a reader, and the author of several books with Jewish and intersectional themes.
This inspiring picture book is based on the true story of a little boy whose family is the target of an anti-semitic incident during Hanukkah. The community responds not with aggression but solidarity, with hundreds of homes displaying menorahs in their windows.
This book illustrates the idea that kindness and faith can turn one light into many, an echo of the Hanukkah miracle.
The art by Caldecott Medalist Paul Zelinksy is powerful and gorgeous. Inspirational!
On a block dressed up in Red and Green
one house shone Blue and White.
It's a holiday season that both Isaac, whose family is Jewish, and Teresa, whose family is Christian, have looked forward to for months! They've been counting the days, playing in the snow, making cookies, drawing (Teresa) and writing poems (Isaac). They enjoy all the things they share, as well as the things that make them different.
But when Isaac's window is smashed in the middle of the night, it seems like maybe not everyone appreciates "difference."
I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitledJim Crow Prison.
Muhammad’s study of ideas and discourse about real and imagined crime among African Americans is a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand this history.
He has painstakingly assembled the intellectual, pseudo-scientific, and popular conversations Americans had about the subject from the end of slavery until well into the 20th century.
This work has been particularly important for me because he brings our attention to the urban North and the use of census data, statistics, eugenics, etc., to condemn blackness as a dangerous threat to be contained.
There is no way to truthfully understand race and crime in America without consulting this essential text.
Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize A Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year
"A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us." -Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of Books
How did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? A brilliant and deeply disturbing biography of the idea of black criminality in the making of modern urban America, The Condemnation of Blackness reveals the influence this pernicious myth, rooted in crime statistics, has had on our society and our sense of self. Black crime statistics have shaped debates about everything from…
I’ve been studying dehumanization, and its relationship to racism, genocide, slavery, and other atrocities, for more than a decade. I am the author of three books on dehumanization, one of which was awarded the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for non-fiction, an award that is reserved for books that make an outstanding contribution to understanding racism and human diversity. My work on dehumanization is widely covered in the national and international media, and I often give presentations at academic and non-academic venues, including one at the 2012 G20 economic summit where I spoke on dehumanization and mass violence.
Most people’s idea of lynching is the sanitized version that they have picked up from movies and TV. However, the practice of lynching, as it was carried out in the United States from the late 19th to well into the 20th century, was far more hideous than a few people hanging a man from a tree. This classic contribution concentrates on spectacle lynchings. These were public lynchings attended by hundreds or even thousands of spectators. They involved hours of torture and bodily mutilation, often culminating in the victim being burned alive. Lynching and Spectacleis a vital read for anyone wishing to understand the full horror of American Racism.
This title presents public reinforcement of white supremacy. Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America often exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In ""Lynching and Spectacle"", Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and what they derived from them. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a wide range of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema. The connections between lynching and these practices encouraged the horrific violence committed and gave it social acceptability.Wood expounds on the critical role…
I’m a writer, theatre artist and calligrapher who has spent a lifetime dedicated to the look, sound, texture and meaning of words. Writing in verse and prose poetry gives me a powerful tool to explore hard themes. Poetry is economical. It makes difficult subjects personal. Through poetry, I can explore painful choices intimately and emerge on a different path at a new phase of the journey. While my semi-autobiographical novel These Are Not the Words “is about” mental health and drug addiction, I’ve shown this through layers of images, sounds, textures, tastes—through shards of memories long submerged, recovered through writing, then structured and fictionalized through poetry.
In A Wreath for Emmett Till, Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the unique beauty of a life, of the vibrancy of youth at 14 years old. Written as a “crown of sonnets,” where the last line of one sonnet becomes the first of the next, it is a book that bears witness and conveys huge themes of justice, loss, and remembrance while focussing on small moments, gestures, and images. I am in awe of Nelson’s ability to use a very formalized writing style to depict one of the most brutal murders of the twentieth century.
In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi.The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention.
Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement.This martyr's wreath, woven from a little-known but sophisticated form of poetry, challenges us to speak out against modern-day injustices, to 'speak what we see.'
From early childhood, I escaped into nature when times got tough—climbing trees, exploring the woods, and chatting with beach creatures. When I had to be indoors, books were my escape, and most of my favorites had rich nature settings that were so well-drawn that I could see them and feel like I was actually there. Following strong protagonists as they deal with life challenges by interacting with nature was an affirmation for me and still is. As a parent and former fifth-grade teacher, I’ve witnessed the power that books have to lessen loneliness and inspire hope and activism.
King thinks his deceased brother has returned as a dragonfly and visits him in the bayou area where he hangs out. I love books with hints of magic in them, especially when they show up in nature, and I couldn’t help but root for King. Even as he struggles, he is sweet and empathetic and worries about others as much as he worries about himself.
Friends and family are fully developed; nobody is all good or all bad. The teacher in me appreciates King’s story as a great discussion starter and empathy-builder, as well as an engaging plot. Witnessing the triumph of an underdog never gets old for me.
Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature!
Winner of the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry!
In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy's grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself.
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Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live…
I've been writing since I was 7 years old. Star Wars had a big influence on me, but as I got older I gravitated toward Halo: Combat Evolved and Starship Troopers. Modern stories by the likes of Jason Anspach and Nick Cole, JN Chaney, and Rick Partlow...these are the stories that keep me up at night, my mind reeling with the insanity of what I've just read, pondering how close we are as a society to achieving the outlandish adventures contained in these books. I was in the Air Force for 14 years as an F-16 mechanic. I found my voice by combining my experiences and my passion for Science Fiction.
This book is the first entry in the Galaxy's Edge series and is quintessential military science fiction.
Anspach and Cole are a dynamic duo that delivers the craziest series I've read in decades. For me, Galaxy's Edge redefined what storytellers are capable of, and I consider it the pinnacle of the genre. From the gritty realism of the daily life of a space grunt all the way to a mystical element that is an homage to Star Wars—but better—the twists and turns keep coming.
Packed with action, mystery, intrigue, and constantly breaking the "rules of writing" in unique and compelling ways, this series is an absolute must for fans of SF, Mil SF, and great stories in general. Just wait till you get to the character of Tom. It's wild!
A hot, stinking, dumpster fire. And most days I don’t know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno.
A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy’s edge. With no room for error, the Republic’s elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come.
As someone who’s never been allowed to drive, but gets motion-sick reading in a bus or car, I’ve been a lover of audiobooks since I had my Walkman and a backpack full of audiobook cassettes. As a queer man, I’m always looking for more immersive stories about people like me. Finding queer voices and queer narratives is so important to me as a way to offset how queer people don’t have an inherited continuance of our culture as most marginalized people do; books are a way to fill that gap. I do own a rescued husky, and there’s nothing like an engrossing audiobook to get me through those minus-forty Canadian winter walks with a dog.
Cari Hunter never fails to invoke Northern England with every sense, and Nicola Victoria Vincent’s performances continue to be among the absolute best experiences. This story starts off with an EMT, Grace, being taken hostage by a wounded woman at gunpoint, and then manages to twist and shift the entire time you’re listening. Hunter’s ability to weave in a secondary romantic plot while people are dodging bullets, outwitting villains, and desperately trying to stay alive is brilliant, and my dog always gets a longer walk while I’ve got a Hunter thriller to listen to. If you’re a fan of thrillers and audiobooks, and have yet to bump into Hunter or Vincent, thank me later, once you’ve enjoyed the whole backlist.
Dr. Grace Kendal never stands a chance. The injured woman comes out of nowhere, bleeding heavily and holding a gun. Compelled to help her, Grace is dragged into Elin Breckenridge’s nightmare. Their fight to survive will take them across the country and to the limits of their endurance. But who is Elin running from? As Grace struggles for answers, one thing becomes clear—Elin is somehow connected to a dead man, and Grace could be next.
For Detective Sergeant Safia Faris, the case should have been easy: one dead body, one suspect. But the deeper she digs, the more obvious it…
I spent 20 years in the US Army with 10 of those years in Korea. Everybody thought I was crazy. Why would you like being stationed in such an odd country as Korea? Whenever I tried to explain, their noses would crinkle and they’d stare at me as if I were mad. I started collecting books that explained better than I did. To supplement it I purchased a manual Smith Corona typewriter at the PX and to assuage my angst began writing mystery stories about two 8th Army investigators in Seoul, Korea. Fifteen novels and over 50 short stories later I’m still attempting to explain the odd beauty of GI life through the eyes of a GI.
I’ve known plenty of GIs like Master Sergeant Maxwell Slaughter. Non-commissioned Officers who hustle and make deals and wrap military bureaucracy around their little fingers. Slaughter’s supply room had air conditioning, plenty of pristine underwear, socks, and long johns to bargain with, and his own vending machine to satisfy his addiction to cold bottles of soda. He also had a protégé, in this case, the young Eustis Clay, who tried to out-hustle his mentor but never quite made it. He did, however, introduce Master Sergeant Slaughter to the even younger Bobby Jo Pepperdine, but instead of kindling a romance, the two lost souls started a father/daughter affection that the teenage girl had never before experienced.
Ultimately tragic, Goldman shows his dramatic flair with the simple line of farewell uttered by Slaughter: “Until that time, Eustis. Until that time.”
Unbelievable as it may sound, William Goldman has pulled off a minor miracle by writing at this late date a genuinely funny and touching novel about barracks life. If nothing else, the book is worth the price of admission for its explanation of the ground rules of a game called 'Grading Women'... There is a full, rich measure of reading pleasure in this book that expertly runs the gamut from belly laughs to tearjerking. Long after you've forgotten the details of the incidents, you'll remember the warm thread of compassion that runs through the book. Soldier in the Rain, to…
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
Platinga is a sergeant with the San Francisco police department. I love his book because so many of the stories are similar to ones that I experienced as a cop. It brought back some good and some not-so-good memories.
You don’t have to be a cop or a former cop to love the read, though. It’s not only a great reference book for crime writers who want to learn and add authenticity to what they’re writing but also a wonderful read for those who want to take a wild ride inside a cop’s head during the course of their tour of duty.
"The new bible for crime writers." ―The Wall Street Journal
How does it feel to be in a high-speed car chase? What is it like to shoot someone? What do cops really think about the citizens they serve? Nearly everyone has wondered what it's like to be a police officer, but no civilian really understands what happens on the job. 400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat―a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by…
