100 books like Cold Blood, Hot Sea

Peter wrote about his long trek into the Himalayas in the company of a biologist who went in search of the elusive snow leopard. I was awed by this concept, but more so, for Peter, it was a spiritual journey that memorably reflects on his own life and the recent death of his wife.

There’s such vivid beauty and inspirational honesty in his words. It evoked in me a longing for wild places with no expectations attached. 

If you’ve ever felt the sensation of being hunted by a predator who’s higher on the food chain than you are – a man-eater – Quammen's book will bring it all back to you. If you haven’t had that particular pleasure, the book’s discussion of the planet’s most exotic predators – crocodiles, lions, bears, and tigers – will fascinate and educate you. The focus here is not just the ‘big, fierce animals,’ but also the human communities that interact with them, fear them, track them, and try to understand them. In one desperately drawn passage, Quammen describes a tracker ‘who followed a single tiger for more than forty-five days... feeding himself from the leftovers of the tiger’s kills when his food stocks got low.’ Wow. 

Those of us who wage the battle to conserve wildlife don’t always do so in the field. A successful conservation strategy starts with good science, but it often requires effective communication and political strategies as well. J.A. Mills, the author of Blood of the Tiger, is a master at both. Mills, who researched and battled illegal wildlife trade for traffic and the World Wildlife Fund for two decades, gives the reader an often thrilling and always insightful look at the still unfinished battle to save wild tigers from extinction at the hands of poachers and Chinese moguls. She is as expert in describing the politics of CITES – the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species – as she is in detailing the operations of the Chinese markets where tiger parts are sold. Full disclosure: Although Ms. Mills and I have worked in very different domains of the global environmental… show more.

A Parrot Without a Name is the tale of a quest as primitive and compelling as any grail search from medieval legend. It’s the story of John O’Neill and Theodore Parker, two of the 20th century’s most accomplished birders and ornithologists, and their pursuit of the least known and most elusive birds in the whole of South America. Parker, whose death in a small plane crash in the Ecuadorian mountains cut off one of the most famous and unique escapades in birding – he ended up knowing and recording the calls of more than 4000 bird species – shows up as a colorful character with all the quirks of other great scientific iconoclasts such as Alan Turing and Robert Oppenheimer. 

Among the Shadows is set in Portland, Maine. That was its first appeal since I live 30 minutes from Portland and because I’ve met Bruce at a couple of events for Maine writers. As a twenty-seven-year veteran in law enforcement, I figured he’d know his stuff. Among the Shadows isn’t just the intriguing story of a cop investigating the death of other cops, it’s also, you guessed it, got a flawed and tormented detective at the heart of the investigation. His recent separation from his wife and his love/hate relationship with alcohol, make Detective Sergeant John Byron a guy I wanted to get to know. It was well worth my time.

Financial whiz Julia Snowden returns to her Maine hometown to rescue the family’s clambake business. Although she has financial acumen, she lacks true knowledge of how a clam bake works. She learns the hard way when a murder and a wedding reception don’t mix. I wasn’t familiar with the inner workings of clam bakes, from menu to preparation, but I learned with Julia. I also enjoy Ross’s writing style. The combination of the storytelling plus the facts interwoven make this a good book choice.

This first book in a cozy mystery series which is built around an old bed and breakfast on Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine was all I needed to hear to start flipping pages.

Natalie runs The Gray Whale Inn, but discovers a huge resort is planned for the area. Since it’s serious competition for her B&B, the developer is to blame, and Nat must clear her name after he’s found murdered on the rocks.

It’s a light mystery and a nice pre-bedtime read.

Genre fiction tends to lean on tropes and be somewhat predictable, particularly thrillers (I have yet to read a Robin Cook novel in which I didn’t figure out the villain halfway through the book)—but in her debut mystery, YA and popular culture writer Kat Rosenfeld subverts all that and give us a genuinely original tale of greed, envy, treachery, and murder with well-drawn characters and a mastery of setting.  The greatest trick she pulls is leading you to believe that you’re reading one kind of story, before pulling a switcheroo that changes everything—and believe me when I say, you won’t see it coming.

This is one of my all-time favorite books because I love a good mystery and I love the beach.

Colleen Coble never fails to deliver an edge-of-your-seat story with unbeatable scenery. Her books always have amazing plot twists. In The Inn at Ocean’s Edge was one of her finest stories yet. Claire Delamare just discovered that perhaps her picture-perfect life isn’t what she thought it was.

She apparently went missing for an entire year and has no recollection of that time. Not only that but she keeps having panic attacks now that she’s returned to the hotel she disappeared from. The ending was probably the most exceptional I’ve seen.

Arguably the greatest of all detectives, Sherlock Holmes died early in his career when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent him hurtling down the Reichenbach Falls in ‘The Final Problem’. But Holmes soon came back to life—firstly in The Return of Sherlock Holmes and in later years as a character in numerous spinoffs/riffs/reboots. One of the best of these is James Lovegrove’s series of Lovecraftian horror stories featuring Holmes and Watson. They are all great but the third one, Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils, has the best title. Lovegrove writes stylishly and wittily and his deadpan approach to the absurd monsters he conjures up makes these a delicious read.