Here are 47 books that Dead Ground fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been writing my DCI Warren Jones series for more than ten years now. In addition to trying my best to craft a compelling story, with relatable characters, I love the challenge of balancing this with authentic police procedure. All the books and authors recommended here are excellent exponents of this craft. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them, and believe that they have helped me improve as a writer. I deliberately chose the first in each series, in the hope that you will continue reading to see how the characters evolve.
Sergeant Washington Poe and analyst Tilly Bradshaw are top of many folks’ favourites list.
Like Rachel Lynch’s Kelly Porter series, the setting is largely Cumbria. However, Poe and Tilly work for the National Crime Agency, specialising in highly sensitive and unusual cases (eg serial killers), giving a different spin on the police procedural.
Each book has a compelling and devious central mystery, but the real joy is the pairing of Poe and Tilly. Poe is a clever but taciturn grump, who favours the simple life, living largely off-grid in a stone shepherd’s hut. Tilly is a naïve computer genius, with few social filters.
Put them together and initially sparks fly, before they become close friends. With laugh-out-loud dialogue, these are an absolute pleasure to read.
'A thrilling curtain raiser for what looks set to be a great new series' Mick Herron
Welcome to the Puppet Show . . .
A serial killer is burning people alive in the Lake District's prehistoric stone circles. He leaves no clues and the police are helpless.
When his name is found carved into the charred remains of the third victim, disgraced detective Washington Poe is brought back from suspension and into an investigation he wants no part of.
Reluctantly partnered with the brilliant, but socially awkward, civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw,…
I grew up in a family exposed to great contrasts of poverty and wealth, in which women were always the ones expected to ‘make nice.” I’ve long been fascinated by the parallels among unfair inequalities based on gender, sexuality, age, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class, and the ways in which these inequalities are disguised, justified, or just plain ignored. This fascination has driven my successful and very lucky career as a socialist feminist economist and public intellectual.
This classic anthology reveals “rational economic man” as a naked and misshapen emperor pretending to be grandly dressed. While unpacking the androcentric (and plain old sexist) assumptions of conventional economic theory, it also provides rich examples of new ways of explaining the links between gender, care, and inequality.
This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases. Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributors--nine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopher--discuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns…
I’m a Swiss researcher and university professor who applies mathematics and psychology to build quantitative models for financial decision-making. Most of my scientific contributions belong to a field of research called behavioral finance, that is, the study of how psychology affects financial decisions. I love mathematics, and I am fascinated by its ability to describe complex mechanisms, including those that generate human behavior.
From this book, I learned that cognitive errors and human misbehaviours are not necessarily in contradiction to rationality.
It taught me that the generally negative perspective on psychological mechanisms provided by behavioural economics is limited. By contrast, a deeper understanding of what rationality means is needed. This book enriched my own way of analyzing how psychological factors impact daily decisions.
For a long time, economists have assumed that we were cold, self-centred, rational decision makers - so-called Homo economicus; the last few decades have shattered this view. The world we live in and the situations we face are of course rich and complex, revealing puzzling aspects of our behaviour. Optimally Irrational argues that our improved understanding of human behaviour shows that apparent 'biases' are good solutions to practical problems - that many of the 'flaws' identified by behavioural economics are actually adaptive solutions. Page delivers an ambitious overview of the literature in behavioural economics and, through the exposition of these…
I have picked these books because I have a passion for good reading material. All the books I have chosen have become reading classics in their own way. They are well written and have plots that go well beyond normal literature in a sense that they unveil the 'human condition' into the realm of the protagonist being up against all odds, where in the end, truth reveals all!
I loved this compelling James Elroy story because of his straightforward writing, which captured the intense mood of the 1960s in Los Angeles, and the misguided spirit of the main character, "Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopins," who focuses all his attention on his unrelenting search for the killer and his search for justice in a violent, murderous, corrupt city.
Three of Ellroy's most compelling novels featuring Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins in one volume. Blood On The Moon: 20 random killings of women are unconnected in police files. But Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins sees a pattern. As he is drawn to the murderer, the two men face a confrontation pitting icy intelligence against white-heated madness. . . Because The Night: Jacob Herzog, hero cop, has disappeared. A multiple murder committed with a pre-Civil War revolver remains unsolved. Are the two cases connected? As Det. Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins pieces the puzzle together he discovers the darker threat of John Haviland, a…
As a child, I fell in love with horses. As a teen, I fell in love with a cowboy. That’s how I became the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters and wrote for rodeo magazines. Today I write historical cowboy romances. The Western way of life is down-to-earth, honest, and God-fearing—even in our contemporary world, and I’ve written several of those stories as well. But my favorite challenge takes me back to the 1800s when life was simpler. Not easier, just simpler even though people faced the same emotional challenges we face today. I love writing about their journeys and encouraging readers that there is hope.
I loved the heroine’s grit! Boy howdy, no one’s going to get anything over on her. The story is both gritty and sweet. Real. Full of truth and hope and opposition. Her setting puts you right in the action and her characterizations leave you feeling like you know these people. This was the first book I read from Blanton, and I have since read a couple more.
100,000+ copies! The best-selling saga of sisters finding love in a rowdy, frontier mining town!
Charles McIntyre owns everything and everyone in the lawless, godless mining town of Defiance.
When three good, Christian sisters show up, stranded and alone, he decides to let them stay. The decision may cost him everything, from his brothel...to his heart.
Naomi Miller, angry with God for widowing her, wants no part of Defiance or the saloon-owning, prostitute-keeping Mr. McIntyre. It would seem, however, that God has gone to elaborate lengths to bring them together. The question is, "Why?" Does God really have a plan…
I’ve read everything I could lay my hands on since I was young, and like so many others, I’ve always preferred to read about unusual characters, uncommon situations, or both simultaneously. The books I described here fulfill those requirements for me, even though they are superficially very different from one another. Now that I write my own novels, my over-arching goal is for each of my books to be better than the one that precedes it. I do my best to offer my readers interesting characters in compelling situations, and if my readers think I’ve succeeded, I will be a very happy author.
I always want to read a good story, but the characters must be compelling. The protagonist in this book is Leona Reese, a sergeant in the Saint Paul police department. She’s worked hard for that position, but when she ignores her vision problems and fails her shooting range test, she’s reassigned to another unit.
In her new assignment, she works with Thom, another investigator who is wheelchair-bound. He has an off-beat sense of humor about his condition, which adds humor to an otherwise serious book. Those bits of humor play off nicely against Leo’s ongoing vision problems while they work together to solve a murder. There are two books in this series, and I’ve heard a third one is in the works. It’ll be worth the wait.
Leona "Leo" Reese is a 33-year-old police patrol sergeant with over ten years of law enforcement experience. After she fails her bi-yearly shooting qualification due to a vision problem, Leo is temporarily assigned to the investigations division of the state's Department of Human Services. She's shell-shocked by her vision impairment and frustrated to be reassigned to another department, even temporarily. On her first day on the new job, she's saddled with a case where a woman at an independent living facility has been murdered by an apparent burglar. But all is not as it seems, and it will take all…
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.
I’m a playwright who loves not only writing plays but also teaching dramatic writing workshops – mostly through my San Francisco program and Chicago Dramatists where I’m a Resident Playwright. My plays have received many awards and honors, including three selections for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, and have been presented in Europe, Russia, and Australia as well as the U.S. Meanwhile my workshops and script consultations have given me the opportunity to work with thousands of writers over the past 35 years. This led me to begin writing books for writers, starting with The Dramatic Writer’s Companion, now in its Second Edition.
I saw the world premiere of this play at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and never forgot it.
What stays with me most is the powerful main character Mama Nadi, a fierce, shrewd businesswoman who runs a brothel in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a civil war. And though she lives in a world where sex trafficking, rape, mutilation, and other brutality is commonplace, she knows how to keep her establishment flourishing and her girls, safe.
Playwright Nottage based her characters on women and girls whom she interviewed during a trip to Africa. The authenticity of the characters and storyline may help explain why the play went on to earn multiple awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
“A powerhouse drama. . . . Lynn Nottage’s beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports.”—Linda Winer, Newsday
“An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world’s brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won’t expect.”—David Cote, Time Out New York
A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s…
Like many of us over (ahem…we’ll say) 40, I grew up reading historical romance—those were the first full-length romance novels on store shelves. My mum is British and visits there added to my interest in Regency England. Then 50 Shades exploded and people’s spice level tolerance increased. But mainly in contemporary romance, with all the tools and toys. Curious as to how spice in the Regency would look, I went searching. I found a few of these fabulous authors, but not many choices, so I decided to write one. Now there are more authors published in this subgenre, and I’m proud to be one of them.
Quick note—this series is (IMO) the spiciest of the 5 recommendations I include on my list. And Pearce takes some liberties with historical accuracy. However, her characters are deeply damaged and it takes a powerful love—and storytelling ability—to make them whole and able to fall in love. Those elements are particularly well represented in this tale. I try to avoid recommending book 2 of a series and yes, you really should read book 1 first, but this book does stand alone and I find it the most powerful story of the series.
A husband and wife find a solution to their troubles in this historical erotic romance by the New York Times bestselling author of Simply Sexual.
At Madame Helene's exclusive House of Pleasure in London, all guests are welcome to explore beyond their inhibitions . . .
Forced to wed at a young age, Abigail Beecham is tired of living in a sexless marriage. She longs to succumb to the delicious pleasures of pure carnal lust that she has only read about. And if her husband can't satisfy her erotic needs, she's ready to find a man who can . .…
I'm a hybrid author from Bulgaria, and my work mostly focuses on historical fiction and fantasy. History has always been mainly centered around the male point of view. But many female heroes would also like to tell us their stories. My fascination started with the women Haiduks of Bulgaria, which gave birth to my first book Sirma. And the more I researched, the more I realized countless historical female figures worldwide deserve just as much attention. I hope this list is enriching to all readers and helps them see their captivating point of view.
The Flower Boat Girl is a historical novel about the life of Zheng Yi Sao, the most successful pirate in history (and, yes, a woman). Sold as a child to a floating brothel, at 26 she buys her freedom, but then is kidnapped and forced to marry a pirate. From there, she uses her strength and cunning mind to carve her destiny and practically make history. I loved this book, because it gives us an honest portrayal of a pirate's life and how a woman has no place in it, yet one woman makes it against all odds.
Her father traded away her youth. Sea bandits stole her freedom. She has one way to get them back: Become the most powerful pirate in the world.
South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, 26-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader.
Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her…
