Here are 100 books that I Who Have Never Known Men fans have personally recommended if you like
I Who Have Never Known Men.
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I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?
A generation or so after The Calamitous Event (TCE), our hero’s dog is stolen by an unexpected visitor to their remote home in the Outer Hebrides. This book is my definition of a cracking good read. It has adventure, surprises, and insights into the human condition that led to TCE in the first place. Above all, it features a boy and his overwhelming mission - to get his dog back. If, like me, you love dogs you are going to love this book.
'You'll remember A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World long after you finish reading' Peng Shepherd, author of The Book Of M
'Fletcher's suspenseful, atmospheric tale imagines a near future in which our world is in ruins . . . an adventure saga punctured by a gut-punch twist' Entertainment Weekly
'Truly engrossing . . . brings hope and humanity to a cold and scary world' Keith Stuart, author of A Boy Made of Blocks
'I promise you're going to love it' Louisa Morgan, author of A Secret History…
I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?
TCE here is a virus that leaves just one woman alive. I found this quite irritating at first because the law of averages would say there HAD to be at least a handful of other survivors. The story features a woman who would take to her bed for the day if she broke a fingernail. I enjoyed seeing a female character in this role although she has a tendency to be a bit wet. She spends the first few weeks post-TCE breaking into nightclubs, drug dens, and museums and getting smashed. Set in London, it’s a great travelogue for this brilliant city. I started to warm towards her when she finally pulls herself together and we watch as she learns the skills needed to survive.
It's December 2023 and the world as we know it has ended.
The human race has been wiped out by a virus called 6DM ('Six Days Maximum' - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself).
But somehow, in London, one woman is still alive. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants, hiding how she feels and desperately trying to fit in. A woman who is entirely unprepared to face a future on her own.
Now, with only an abandoned golden retriever for company,…
When I’m writing, my brain’s ability to jump instantly to the worst-case scenario is a huge plus. But in life, that’s just called “anxiety,” something I’ve always struggled with. Works of fiction that do what my brain does naturally — assume the worst — and still find some hope, humor, or redemption there have always been weirdly reassuring to me. And what’s more “worst-case scenario” than post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction? Here are five books where, in the wake of disaster or the grip of tyranny, people still manage to have dreams, dignity, or even just a laugh.
In Zone One, the frantic oh-*expletive* bloodbath phase of a zombie apocalypse has clicked over into something like a new normal. In lower Manhattan, our hero “Mark Spitz” mops up straggler zombies seemingly stuck in mindless loops from their past lives and reflects on the transformed yet familiar landscape. Zone One made me realize how specific streets are encoded in my own memories, and made me want to be more present in my own life, to move through the world less like a zombie.
In this brilliantly original take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, American novelist Colson Whitehead shakes up the zombie genre with genius results.
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilisation under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka 'Zone One' - eliminating the most dangerous plague victims, but pockets of infected squatters remain. Teams…
I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?
What happens when you take the meritocracy to extremes and you can only access the best of food and housing etc when your Q is the highest? Dalcher creates an interesting future world, damning of social engineering and genetic manipulation, and reminds us that it was less than a hundred years ago that certain war-hungry fellas (and a few women) salivated over thoughts of a perfect Aryan race. A great page-turner but with a few ‘Deus ex Machina' plot twists with which I’m still struggling. Nevertheless a very worthy read.
**CHRISTINA DALCHER'S GRIPPING NEW THRILLER FEMLANDIA IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW!**
'Terrifyingly plausible' Louise Candlish
'Devastating and brilliant' Woman & Home
'Thought-provoking' Alice Feeney
'Shocking . . . A powerful tale' Cosmopolitan
'Timely' Kia Abdullah
IN THIS WORLD, PERFECTION IS EVERYTHING.
It begins as a way to make things fairer. An education system that will benefit everyone. It's all in the name of progress.
This is what Elena Fairchild believes. As a teacher in one of the government's elite schools for children with high 'Q' scores, she witnesses the advantages first-hand.
But when Elena's own daughter scores lower than expected,…
As a kid I loved space, and devoured science fiction (Doctor Who was my favorite). Now I’m a grown-up, I write books for kids - 70 so far and counting. (My latest picture book is called Sometimes I Am Furious, illustrated by Joe Berger.) The Book of Blast Off! is my second book about space (the first one was just called Space – not the most imaginative title, it’s true). I love writing non-fiction for kids because, unlike grown-ups, you can’t blind them with science. You have to know what you’re talking about so you can explain things clearly. They’re the best audience and you want to be worthy of them.
This is a bit of a cheat, I’m afraid, as it’s the first book in a two-book story (which concludes in Explorers on the Moon) but once you’ve read this one you’ll be dying to find out what happens next.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a Tintin nut. I love all Hergé’s comic books about the intrepid boy reporter and have read them countless times. They’re pacy – certainly as zippy and exciting as any modern action movie – and the choice of angles and framing is worthy of a master of cinema.
In this one, Tintin and his friends are reunited with the eccentric Professor Calculus, who is working on a mission to the moon. But there are spies, saboteurs, and stowaways around, so there’s plenty of mystery and peril – as well as humor – when Tintin and the gang embark on an adventure…
The classic graphic novel. Professor Calculus is building a rocket, but Tintin quickly realizes that there are spies around every corner trying to steal the professor's design! When Professor Calculus' rocket finally takes off for the moon, Tintin and his dog Snowy are on board.
As a child I grew up listening to my Dutch mother’s stories of life under German occupation and her family’s struggle for survival during the Hunger Winter. Life was hard but exciting for a teenager who thought nothing of delivering anti-Nazi leaflets, chopping down lime trees in front of the house for firewood, and evading the Germans on her ancient bike in her quest for food. It was this unwavering spirit that I wanted to capture in the four novels I’ve written set in wartime Holland. She was the inspiration behind my latest World War 2 novel, The Boy in the Attic.
I love Anita Shreve’s writing style, which is spare and yet conveys so much emotion. Resistance is set during World War 2 in occupied Belgium and tells the story of a downed US air force pilot who is found by a young boy, the son of a Nazi collaborator, before being taken in by a couple who hides him in the attic before he can be discovered by the Germans. This atmospheric story is about love and betrayal, but so powerfully portrays the atrocities of war.
The wife of a Resistance worker in Nazi-occupied Belgium falls in love with a wounded American pilot, forcing her to struggle with trust and betrayal. The wounded pilot becomes the pivot of the young housewife's life and their love affair causes repercussions throughout the small town.
My name is Ruthie Robinson, and I write romance because I love romance. I also love to research and learn new things, so if I can find a topic I know nothing about, study it enough to throw it into a love story, then life is golden. Games We Play is a love story first, but there’s also beer and bingo. I wrote it just after the start of the craft-beer craze. Games We Play is also a book about bingo halls, which I also enjoyed attending and learning about. So many of the interesting characters who find a home in my stories can be found at both beer joints and bingo halls.
After tasting many beers in my research quest, I honed in on Belgium beers, which are my favorites. I like strong blondes, lol. Blue Moon types, golden with a hint of oranges, or other types of citrus fruits. This book is a guide to all things Belgium brewing. A guide to traveling to Belgium, to the beers Belgium brewers produce and where you can find them. This is a guidebook for brewery tours, pubs, and cafes. If you find yourself in the country and in need of a guide, this is the book for you.
Up to 1.8 million Britons visit Belgium every year and the 7th edition of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide Belgium is an indispensible companion. This complete guide to the world of Belgian beer is packed with information on breweries, beers and bars from around the country. It also features comprehensive advice on getting there, what to eat, where to stay and how to bring the best of Belgium's beer offering back home with you. The guide contains full-colour province-by-province maps and detailed city maps with bar locations and includes details on over 500 bars and cafes.
I’ve been interested in car culture since my anthropologist sister and I first began collaborating on a research and writing project on the topic over fifteen years ago. At that time, I had just moved from a transit-rich city to a car-dependent suburb and she had just moved from a suburb to a walkable city, which got us talking about just how much this singular object—the car—shaped our everyday lives. Carjackedwas published in 2010, and since then I’ve continued to read and write about transportation, although I also write a lot about education—another obsession for another list of recommended books.
This unusual and provocative collection of essays and reflections by a Belgian philosopher contains ideas about car culture I refer to and reflect on often though I first read them over a decade ago. The author led me to understand how cars, though they can close great distances and bring families and friends together, have also contributed to an atomized society in which we move between isolated places in isolation from each other, a separation aided by fear and adding to it.
Particularly since September 11, the War on Terrorism and the war in Iraq, it has been almost impossible to dissociate architecture from its social context. Add to this the massive influence of capitalism on architecture, disturbing demographic developments and associated political, social, and ecological catastrophes, and the result is a robotic snapshot of a society dominated by fear, exclusion and simulation. Lieven De Cauter, a leading theoretician on the subject of capsularisation, has worked over the past six years on the essays and articles contained in this book, and has documented and analyzed our changing societies before and after 9/11.…
Jeremy Black is a prolific lecturer and writer, the author of over 100 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth-century British, European, and American political, diplomatic and military history but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture, and on the nature and uses of history itself.
Much of what I have said about James Holland can also be said of his friend Peter Caddick-Adams, whose first-rate works include Monte Cassino. Ten Armies in Hell (2012), Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day (2019), and this, by far the best book on the last major German offensive. Adroit at capturing the German perspective, Caddick-Adams is also very good on the American response. A lengthy read, but worth it.
Snow and Steel is a huge reassessment of Hitler's last great throw of the dice: 'The Battle of the Bulge', the battle for the Ardennes 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. This was an utterly fascinating five weeks when for a time it looked like Hitler had outflanked the allied armies pushing toward the Rhine and might just throw them back to the Normandy beaches. It is also the context for the catastrophic events at Bastogne depicted so graphically in Band of Brothers.
For military history fans this is one of those touchstone battles of the second world war,…
My interest in this topic began because of a trip to a museum in 2008. I noticed that a painting had been removed from view and a small piece of paper was hanging on the wall where the painting had been. The paper explained that this piece was involved in a court case revolving around whether or not it had been stolen from its Jewish owner by the Nazis during World War II. Nazi cultural appropriation, looting, suppression, and destruction turned out to be one of the most fascinating stories of the entire war. The research for my historical novel took several years, but it allowed me to write a book based on the facts.
Noah Charney is an art historian and has written several interesting books that I have read. Even though this book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb, came out too late for my novel, the “altarpiece” of my book is in fact the “Mystic Lamb” otherwise known as the Ghent Altarpiece. My quasi-obsession with this monumental piece of art is matched by Charney and he describes how often it has been stolen and nearly destroyed. No other piece of art has had a history quite like this one.
Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian's list of the ten most important paintings ever made. It is also the most frequently stolen artwork of all time. Since its completion in 1432, this twelve-panel oil painting has been looted in three different wars, burned, dismembered, forged, smuggled, censored, hidden, attacked by iconoclasts, hunted by the Nazis and Napoleon, used as a diplomatic tool, ransomed, rescued by Austrian double-agents, and stolen a total of thirteen times. In this fast-paced, real-life thriller, art historian Noah Charney unravels the fascinating stories of each of these thefts. Charney also explores psychological…
