Here are 50 books that Batavia's Graveyard fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m drawn to the idea of doing what you think is right when others are against you because I’ve always felt the desire to row against the current and just do my own thing. I tend to avoid following the crowd because oftentimes I simply don’t agree with them. Am I being purposely difficult? Maybe. But I fear a society that goes with the flow simply because it’s easier and it doesn’t require them to think for themselves. It’s okay to listen to other people, but before you make any major decisions, ask yourself a question: Is this right for me?
Here’s my confession: I hated Chris McCandless by the time I finished this book. I hated his cockiness and lack of respect for the power of the wilderness.
But you know what I give him credit for? His ability to leave his life of privilege and the courage to go out into the world and forge his own destiny. He did what he thought was best for him despite the pushback he received from his friends and family.
I think I hated him so much because I wanted him to succeed, and he doomed himself through his own hubris.
Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all…
Jane Finch lives in Norfolk, England and is married with one son. Jane has travelled extensively and has also lived in Canada, Spain, and the Caribbean. Having spent over twenty-five years working in English Law, Jane decided to try her hand at writing crime thrillers. Her first novel, Due Process, is based in her hometown in Norfolk. Her book, The Black Widows, published by Solstice Publishing, reached the top ten of Amazon’s crime thriller list. Jane is a member of International Thriller Writers Inc. Now retired, Jane is free to write full-time, when inspired to do so, although she says, “None of my friends tell me anything anymore because they know I’ll write about it!”
When John Darwin got into debt and ran out of money-making ideas, he decided to fake his own death so that his wife could claim the life insurance. The plan was to move to another country and live off the proceeds of his crime. But things didn’t go to plan. The arrogance and ineptitude of John Darwin, and his complete disregard for his family, defies belief. I couldn’t wait to read this book and was not disappointed. It has now been made into a drama by the BBC in the UK.
When Anne Darwin told the world and her family that her husband, John, had disappeared while canoeing in the North Sea, her life changed forever.
She had just lied to the police, the press, her friends and neighbours, insurance companies and her own sons.
While her husband hid in a bedsit in their rental house next door, Anne had to face the music. She claimed the life insurance payouts, endured the police questioning, accepted the consolations and left the country she loved to start her life again.
But why, when she had been perfectly happy with her lifestyle, knowing her…
Jane Finch lives in Norfolk, England and is married with one son. Jane has travelled extensively and has also lived in Canada, Spain, and the Caribbean. Having spent over twenty-five years working in English Law, Jane decided to try her hand at writing crime thrillers. Her first novel, Due Process, is based in her hometown in Norfolk. Her book, The Black Widows, published by Solstice Publishing, reached the top ten of Amazon’s crime thriller list. Jane is a member of International Thriller Writers Inc. Now retired, Jane is free to write full-time, when inspired to do so, although she says, “None of my friends tell me anything anymore because they know I’ll write about it!”
A mystery that confounds the world. How can a flight completely disappear? There are several conspiracy theories and ideas but the truth is – no one really knows what happened and probably never will. This book sets out the facts and leaves the reader to decide and it will have you mulling over the endless possibilities. The facts are troubling and the theories continue. Every time I board a plane I think of Flight MH370 and what those passengers must have endured. Bad enough as fiction but to realise it’s true is devastating.
On 8 March, 00:41, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. At 01:19, the pilot bid air traffic control 'good night'. Two minutes later, the plane and its 227 passengers vanished from the skies. No trace has been found. The disappearance of flight MH370 has horrified people across the globe. In an age where a stolen smartphone can be pinpointed to any location on earth, the vanishing of a cruise liner and 227 passengers is the greatest mystery since the Mary Celeste. Experienced author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne has researched the case with incredible thoroughness, revealing…
I am a novelist who loves stories that express deep emotions and life-changing experiences, suspenseful stories that explore how humankind responds to tragedy, to heartache, and to joy, so that is what I write. My stories don’t come from me; they come through me. I often listen to scene-setting music full blast over and over again as scenes form in my head and the words pour onto the page. I don’t write my stories in order. I usually know the beginning and end, but I write whatever scene I “see” and then arrange them in the right order when I’m done.
I loved The Waltons, the closeness of the family, and how they solved typical family squabbles. As an adult, I watched every episode again with my kids, so I was thrilled when I actually met The Homecoming author Earl Hamner, Jr. (the real John-Boy Walton/Clay-Boy Spencer) in an online writers’ group way back when the internet was first invented. We became great online friends. His John-Boy character inspired the character in my book, a good-hearted teen who, despite living in modern times, traverses his small southern town on a horse, just as John-Boy rode Blue, his mule.
A young man searches for his missing father on Christmas Eve in this sequel to Spencer’s Mountain, the novel that inspired The Waltons.
It’s the night before Christmas, but Clay Spencer has failed to return home. Leaving his worried family to keep watch at the homestead, his son, Clay-Boy, takes to the snowy Virginia hills in search of his father. Along the way, he will meet an irate deer, a threatening county sheriff, a congregation of African American churchgoers, and two elderly women who happen to be bootleggers—in this tale filled with warmth, humor, and emotion.
My academic writing is focused on leadership, and leading mutinies is probably the most dangerous thing any leader can do: the chances of success are slim and the likelihood of the leaders surviving even a successful mutiny are negligible. So why do it? The book suggests an answer through a typology of dissent that is rooted in the environment mutineers find themselves in, but that still doesn’t explain by very similar conditions generate very different outcomes. To explain that I turned to two ideas: the importance of the moral economy and the role of the puer robustus – the inveterate recalcitrant who takes it upon themselves to resolve the despotic situation.
This is a multi-volume work that poses several questions surrounding the events of 1857. First, while the British called it a ‘mutiny’, the rebels were clear that their ‘rebellion’ was as much to do with freeing the country from the British colonial power as it was to do with concerns about cultural taboos surrounding the use of animal fat in weapon cartridges. Second, the voices of the rebels/mutineers, for the first time, outnumber those of the colonial power. So often in mutinies we only hear the voices of the authorities, here we are surrounded by their opponents.
The Mutiny at the Margins series takes a fresh look at the Revolt of 1857 from a variety of original and unusual perspectives, focusing in particular on neglected socially marginal groups and geographic areas which have hitherto tended to be unrepresented in studies of this cataclysmic event in British imperial and Indian historiography.
Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising (Volume 4) deals with how battles were won and lost and how the army re-organised after the revolt. It also touches on the thorny issue of how to define the events of 1857-as a rebellion, a national uprising or a small…
My academic writing is focused on leadership, and leading mutinies is probably the most dangerous thing any leader can do: the chances of success are slim and the likelihood of the leaders surviving even a successful mutiny are negligible. So why do it? The book suggests an answer through a typology of dissent that is rooted in the environment mutineers find themselves in, but that still doesn’t explain by very similar conditions generate very different outcomes. To explain that I turned to two ideas: the importance of the moral economy and the role of the puer robustus – the inveterate recalcitrant who takes it upon themselves to resolve the despotic situation.
This is the best collection for readers whose interests lie in the recent naval tradition of mutinies. It covers mutinies across the globe and includes some of the classic examples, such as the 1905 Battleship Potemkin, the 1931 Invergordon Royal Navy mutiny, and the 1944 Port Chicago mutiny. The first speaks to the importance of conditions on board ship, the second directly reflects the current wave of strikes in the UK, caused by the same phenomena: pay. The last is in a different category altogether and reminds us that mutinies are seldom isolated from their environment, indeed, the Port Chicago mutiny played a key role in the early post-war struggle for civil rights in the USA.
This volume brings together a set of scholarly, readable and up-to-date essays covering the most significant naval mutinies of the 20th century, including Russia (1905), Brazil (1910), Austria (1918), Germany (1918), France (1918-19), Great Britain (1931), Chile (1931), the United States (1944), India (1946), China (1949), Australia, and Canada (1949).
Each chapter addresses the causes of the mutiny in question, its long- and short-term repercussions, and the course of the mutiny itself. More generally, authors consider the state of the literature on their mutiny and examine significant historiographical issues connected with it, taking advantage of new research and new methodologies…
My academic writing is focused on leadership, and leading mutinies is probably the most dangerous thing any leader can do: the chances of success are slim and the likelihood of the leaders surviving even a successful mutiny are negligible. So why do it? The book suggests an answer through a typology of dissent that is rooted in the environment mutineers find themselves in, but that still doesn’t explain by very similar conditions generate very different outcomes. To explain that I turned to two ideas: the importance of the moral economy and the role of the puer robustus – the inveterate recalcitrant who takes it upon themselves to resolve the despotic situation.
This is an unusual take on perhaps the best-known mutiny of them all: the mutiny on HMS Bounty. While most books on the topic focus on the conditions around the mutiny or the state of the relationship between Captain Bligh and the mutineers, especially Fletcher Christian, Denning takes the view of a cultural anthropologist and explores the language and theatrical performances of those involved and situates these against the historical context and the way that context – and therefore the accounts of the mutiny – shifted across time.
Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty have become proverbial in their capacity to evoke the extravagant and violent abuse of power. But William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox which inspired Greg Dening to ask why the mutiny took place. His book explores the theatrical nature of what was enacted in the power-play on deck, on the beaches at Tahiti and in the murderous settlement at Pitcairn, on the altar stones and temples of sacrifice, and on the catheads from which men were hanged. Part of the key…
My academic writing is focused on leadership, and leading mutinies is probably the most dangerous thing any leader can do: the chances of success are slim and the likelihood of the leaders surviving even a successful mutiny are negligible. So why do it? The book suggests an answer through a typology of dissent that is rooted in the environment mutineers find themselves in, but that still doesn’t explain by very similar conditions generate very different outcomes. To explain that I turned to two ideas: the importance of the moral economy and the role of the puer robustus – the inveterate recalcitrant who takes it upon themselves to resolve the despotic situation.
The Christmas ‘Truce’ of December 1914 is both well-known and widely mythologized. What Crocker does is take the conventional account that insists on a sanitized and good-natured holiday break between warring nations, and subjects that narrative to a critical approach. This exposes a whole gamut of alternative understandings, including the way that the military establishments on both sides struggled to contain the dissent and fought hard to represent it, not as a mutiny, but as a mutual agreement between two chivalrous armies.
In late December 1914, German and British soldiers on the western front initiated a series of impromptu, unofficial ceasefires. Enlisted men across No Man's Land abandoned their trenches and crossed enemy lines to sing carols, share food and cigarettes, and even play a little soccer. Collectively known as the Christmas Truce, these fleeting moments of peace occupy a mythical place in remembrances of World War I. Yet new accounts suggest that the heartwarming tale ingrained in the popular imagination bears little resemblance to the truth.
In this detailed study, Terri Blom Crocker provides the first comprehensive analysis of both scholarly…
I’m a science fiction and fantasy novelist and editor. I’m also a corporate lawyer and mergers and acquisitions consultant. I have a passion for trade, in history, games, literature, and even real life. I fear that we have far too much art glorifying killers and bullies, and I think the future will be built, as the past has been, by people who are willing to explore, meet other cultures, get to know them, and work to find deals that will benefit everyone involved.
This omnibus collects eleven short stories about space merchant Nicholas Van Rijn. Van Rijn (no coincidence that he’s Dutch) is literate, clever, eccentric in speech, archaic in dress, and occasionally valiant in battle – but he’d much rather trade than fight, and although he describes trade as “swindling each other,” he characteristically strikes deals that benefit all parties.
Van Rijn’s trade-in spices (he is CEO of the Solar Spice and Liquors Company) is a callout to the history of the Dutch East India Company. The great early modern companies (and specifically, the British East India Company) are one of the inspirations in my book: they founded some fortunes and give to startling adventure stories, but the contradictions inherent in their nature also led to corruption and oppression.
Follow the exploits of Nicholas Van Rijn, one of Science Fiction's most
popular characters, as told by Science Fiction's Grand Master, Poul Anderson, in
Volume 1 in the Complete Technic Civilization Series.
I find the seventeenth century fascinating, and both of my novels are set in that period. The century was a time of great flux, and I am especially interested in exploring the kinds of things that women might have done, even though their accomplishments weren’t recorded. There is a wonderful article by novelist Rachel Kadish called “Writing the Lives of Forgotten Women,” in which she refers to Hilary Mantel’s comments that people whose lives are not recorded fall through the sieve of history. Kadish says that, “Lives have run through the sieve, but we can catch them with our hands.” These novels all attempt to do that.
One of the characters of my novel goes to a Dutch colony, and I found this look at what that might be like particularly fascinating.
Rajaram gives us the intensely personal perspective of two young women, Jana and Sontje, who in 1620 Amsterdam have no way to make a living. They sign on to become “Company Daughters,” the company being the Dutch East India Company. Agreeing to travel to the other side of the world and marry men they have never met, the two women land in a place they had not imagined, and find a way to survive with one another’s care.
‘Blew my mind… so magically written and most of all that it is based on true events… a hard-hitting, soul-crushing book… I loved every moment of it… immersive, heart-wrenching, I feel emotional writing this review.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars
Wanted: Company Daughters. Virtuous young ladies to become the brides of industrious settlers in a foreign land. The Company will pay the cost of the lady’s dowry and travel. Returns not permitted, orphans preferred.
Amsterdam, 1620. Jana Beil has learned that life rarely provides moments of joy. Having run away from a violent father, her days are spent searching for work…
