90 books like Left Behind

By Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins,

Here are 90 books that Left Behind fans have personally recommended if you like Left Behind. Shepherd is a community of 9,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Agents of the Apocalypse

By David Jeremiah,

Book cover of Agents of the Apocalypse

Randy C. Dockens Author Of Mercy of the Iron Scepter

From the list on biblical prophecy in fiction format.

Who am I?

I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.

Randy's book list on biblical prophecy in fiction format

Why did Randy love this book?

I found this book interesting from the perspective that it is almost the flip side of the book Left Behind. While Left Behind deals with the inner circle battling the evil world leader, this book is more about the people in the periphery who are not close to the action. It shows how the acts of the evil world leader affect the average person and reveals their view of what is taking place around them.

By David Jeremiah,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Agents of the Apocalypse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Who Will Usher in Earth’s Final Days?
Are we living in the end times? Is it possible that the players depicted in the book of Revelation could be out in force today? And if they are, would you know how to recognize them?

In Agents of the Apocalypse, noted prophecy expert Dr. David Jeremiah does what no prophecy expert has done before. He explores the book of Revelation through the lens of its major players—the exiled, the martyrs, the elders, the victor, the king, the judge, the 144,000, the witnesses, the false prophet, and the beast.

One by one, Dr.…


Transgression

By R.S. Ingermanson,

Book cover of Transgression

Randy C. Dockens Author Of Mercy of the Iron Scepter

From the list on biblical prophecy in fiction format.

Who am I?

I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.

Randy's book list on biblical prophecy in fiction format

Why did Randy love this book?

This novel has an interesting reveal on first-century history. Two people, one on purpose, one accidentally, leave the present age to be teleported back to first-century Jerusalem and cannot find a way to get back to their modern times. Much of the New Testament history is told up close and personal where the author makes you feel like an integral part of this time of history. I was enthralled and surprised by how words affected all my senses to such a degree. I found the storyline engrossing and made me feel as if I was there.

By R.S. Ingermanson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Transgression as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

All your life, you dreamed about the City of God.

But you never thought you’d ever actually go there.

Until now.

Your name is Rivka Meyers, and you are a total misfit.

You are a Messianic Jew, studying at UC Berkeley. Misfit.

You are a woman getting your PhD in archaeology—a man’s field. Misfit.

You are in Israel working on an archaeological dig, pretending to be someone you’re not. Misfit.

Your Israeli co-worker on the dig tries to set you up with his cousin, Ari Kazan. Disaster.

Because Ari likes you. And you haven’t told him you’re Messianic.

Ari is…


Fallen From Babel

By T.L Higley,

Book cover of Fallen From Babel

Randy C. Dockens Author Of Mercy of the Iron Scepter

From the list on biblical prophecy in fiction format.

Who am I?

I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.

Randy's book list on biblical prophecy in fiction format

Why did Randy love this book?

A man is teleported from modern times to ancient Babylon when he touches an artifact in a museum. While a lot of the Biblical narrative is not covered, it does allow one to really get a feel of what ancient Babylon would have been like and allows one to almost be a part of that culture. A truly intriguing storyline.

By T.L Higley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fallen From Babel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Peter Thornton doesn’t believe in God.

Or rather, he doesn’t believe in one God. “All paths are valid,” he teaches his university students.

One evening he ventures to the archaeology museum and touches an artifact recently discovered from ancient Babylon.

At the touch he is transported three thousand years back in time to Old Testament Babylon.

Somehow the people know him as Rim-Sin, sorcerer and high priest to the gods of Babylon. The moment he arrives he is accused of murder—a murder Rim-Sin committed—and he must run for his life.

Against the backdrop of Nebuchadnezzar’s court at its zenith, he…


A Lever Long Enough

By Amy Deardon,

Book cover of A Lever Long Enough

Randy C. Dockens Author Of Mercy of the Iron Scepter

From the list on biblical prophecy in fiction format.

Who am I?

I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.

Randy's book list on biblical prophecy in fiction format

Why did Randy love this book?

I found this an intriguing story of time travel back to the first century. Some believe Jesus’ body was stolen from the tomb and his resurrection a hoax. A group of individuals go back in time to observe the theft so they can once and for all prove the fallibility of Christianity. The story has many interesting twists which hinder their plan.

By Amy Deardon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Lever Long Enough as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A small military team travels back in time to film the theft of Jesus’ body from the tomb: "The Case for Christ" meets "The DaVinci Code."

In the near future, the Israeli military has developed a prototypic time machine. When believers in Yeshua (Jesus) create a politically explosive situation that threatens the balance of peace between Israel and nearby countries, the Israelis must send a team of four elite soldiers back to film the theft of Jesus? body from the tomb and thus disprove Christianity. The team, consisting of a Special Forces soldier as leader, an ex-American astronaut as engineering…


The Great Believers

By Rebecca Makkai,

Book cover of The Great Believers

Christopher DiRaddo Author Of The Family Way

From the list on uplifting and celebrating queer kinship and chosen family.

Who am I?

I'm a queer author based in Montreal. When I came out in the early 1990s, at the age of 21, I remember feeling concerned about my future. Family has always been important to me, but I couldn’t imagine what mine would look like as I got older. I knew I wasn't going to have a traditional family like my parents, but I didn’t know what else was possible. Thankfully, I found the answer in books… As queer people, we must seek out and learn our traditions and history. We’re not taught them from birth. Finding books that demonstrate and uplift the bonds that queer people share provides a roadmap for those of us seeking community.

Christopher's book list on uplifting and celebrating queer kinship and chosen family

Why did Christopher love this book?

Many books that tackle the AIDS crisis tend to focus on queer meccas like New York City and San Francisco, but Makkai’s The Great Believers illustrate just how hard the virus hit Chicago.

Jumping back and forth between 1985 and 2005, the book follows a close group of gay men and their straight allies as their communities begin to come under attack. In 1985, Yale Tishman is on the verge of great professional success just as his dreams begin to slip through his fingers.

Meanwhile in 2005, Yale’s friend Fiona Marcus finds herself looking for her runaway daughter in the streets of Paris, while also coming to terms with what she had to give up to care for these men. A masterful book. 

By Rebecca Makkai,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Great Believers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER
THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER

Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler

"A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." -The New York Times Book Review

A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an…


The River Between Us

By Richard Peck,

Book cover of The River Between Us

Frances M. Wood Author Of Daughter of Madrugada

From the list on bringing American history alive for middle graders.

Who am I?

A reader. A librarian. A writer. I majored in History/English in college, partly because I love historical novels. When my editor asked that my second book be set during the California Gold Rush, I knew I wanted to write from the Mexican point of view - I’m a quarter Mexican. I soon found myself deep in research, learning about those years when Mexico owned what is now the American Southwest. Writing Daughter of Madrugada left me wondering: were some of my own ancestors displaced by American encroachment?

Frances' book list on bringing American history alive for middle graders

Why did Frances love this book?

Lots of blood and guts in this book. It’s 1916, and Howard is learning what happened to his family back in 1861. That’s when a pair of young women stepped off a Mississippi River steamboat, and into a tiny town on the Illinois side. The townsfolk - noting the elegance of one girl, and the dark skin of the other - decide they are seeing a mistress and her slave, and go back to arguing about what really interests them: which of their boys are going to fight for the North? Which are going to fight for the South? The Pruitt family has the same concerns - and makes the same assumptions - as everybody else. But in wartime, everything can be turned upside down.

By Richard Peck,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The River Between Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The year is 1861. Civil war is imminent and Tilly Pruitt's brother, Noah, is eager to go and fight on the side of the North. With her father long gone, Tilly, her sister, and their mother struggle to make ends meet and hold the dwindling Pruitt family together. Then one night a mysterious girl arrives on a steamboat bound for St. Louis. Delphine is unlike anyone the small river town has even seen. Mrs. Pruitt agrees to take Delphine and her dark, silent traveling companion in as boarders. No one in town knows what to make of the two strangers,…


Nature's Metropolis

By William Cronon,

Book cover of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Jake Bittle Author Of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration

From the list on modern society’s relationship with nature.

Who am I?

My name is Jake Bittle, and I’m a staff writer at the environmental magazine Grist, where I cover climate change and energy. I’m also the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, published by Simon & Schuster. In that book I try to explore how human beings interact with nature, and how we try to control nature by building a systematic and inflexible society. This is a theme that has always captivated me, ever since I moved as a teenager to a Florida subdivision built on the edge of a swamp, and it’s something I’m always on the lookout for in fiction as well as nonfiction.

Jake's book list on modern society’s relationship with nature

Why did Jake love this book?

A book that forever changed how I viewed the United States, this seminal work of history showed how the expansion of the railroads helped make Chicago into the center of nationwide commodity trade.

The rise of Chicago as a mercantile capital had a profound effect on the ecology of the surrounding countryside: prairie grass was cut up and replaced with endless fields of corn and wheat, old forests in Wisconsin were felled down to their stumps, and buffalo were eradicated to create room for cows to graze.

By William Cronon,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Nature's Metropolis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.

Winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize


Arsenic and Adobo

By Mia P. Manansala,

Book cover of Arsenic and Adobo

Amy Suiter Clarke Author Of Lay Your Body Down

From the list on amateur sleuths who have no idea what they’re doing.

Who am I?

I like to write about everyday people who—whether by overconfidence or desperation—are motivated to solve crimes that hit close to home. My first novel Girl, 11 is about a true crime podcaster investigating a serial killer who terrorized her town decades earlier, and my newest book Lay Your Body Down is about an ex-fundamentalist Christian who returns to her insular community to expose the church’s secrets and uncover the truth of who killed the man she once loved. Normal people can and do solve mysteries before police—and even when detectives are involved, they rely on members of the community. Those are the stories I love to tell.

Amy's book list on amateur sleuths who have no idea what they’re doing

Why did Amy love this book?

Oh my goodness, first of all: this book will make you so hungry. So, be prepared for that.

Taking place in a warm, intimate Filipino restaurant outside Chicago, Arsenic and Adobo forces recently dumped Lila Macapagal into action after a brutal restaurant critic (who just so happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead while eating her aunt’s food.

She and Tita Rosie are the main suspects, so Lila has to put on her amateur sleuth hat and figure out what really happened to stay out of jail and save her aunt’s business. Arsenic and Adobo is funny, charming, and layered with enough sweetness and spice to keep you devouring it until the last crumb. 

By Mia P. Manansala,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Arsenic and Adobo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A RUSA Award-winning novel!

The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer....

When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves…


Heat Wave

By Eric Klinenberg,

Book cover of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago

Daniel P. Aldrich Author Of Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery

From the list on the importance of community during disasters.

Who am I?

We moved to New Orleans in July 2005. We had six weeks in our first home, filling it with furniture, buying a new car, and taking advantage of my first job. When Hurricane Katrina collapsed the levees holding back the nearby lakes, our home – and those of 80% of the city – filled with water. As I waited for FEMA and insurance to help us, I saw instead it was our friends, friends of friends, and faith-based organizations that helped us get back on our feet. Using our own experiences as a start, I traveled to India and Japan to study how communities around the world survived and thrived during shocks. 

Daniel's book list on the importance of community during disasters

Why did Daniel love this book?

This year, many states and cities in the US have been heat by deadly high temperatures, and this book is a “social autopsy” of a July 1995 heat wave in Chicago that killed more than 700 people. Why did these residents die, and not others? While the obvious answers are poverty and age, as many were older people living in poor communities who did not have air conditioning, that isn’t even half the story. Instead, Klinenberg uncovers how, for those residents who had strong social connections, those ties protected them by inviting them out of stiflingly hot homes into safer, cool spaces where they could survive. Rather than a function of what you have, survival in Chicago was a function of being connected.

By Eric Klinenberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Heat Wave as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On Thursday, July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day on which the temperature would eventually climb to 106 degrees. It was the start of an unprecedented heat wave that would last a full week - and leave more than seven hundred people dead. Rather than view these deaths as the inevitable consequence of natural disaster, sociologist Eric Klinenberg decided to figure out why so many people - and, specifically, so many elderly, poor, and isolated people - died, and to identify the social and political failures that together made the heat wave so deadly. Published to coincide with…


South Side Girls

By Marcia Chatelain, Marcia Chatelain,

Book cover of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration

Mark Whitaker Author Of Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance

From the list on the great Black migration.

Who am I?

For more than thirty years, I worked as journalist covering the biggest news stories of the day—at Newsweek magazine (where I became the publication’s first African-American top editor), then as a news executive at NBC News and CNN. Now, I keep a hand in that world as a judge of several prestigious journalism awards while taking a longer view in my own work as a contributor for CBS Sunday Morning, Washington Post book reviewer, and author of narrative non-fiction books with a focus on key personalities and turning points in Black History.

Mark's book list on the great Black migration

Why did Mark love this book?

Mining contemporaneous news accounts, personal letters and diaries, and dozens of in-depth interviews, scholar Marcia Chatelain explores the impact that the Great Migration had on a generation of young Black Chicago women, who coped with coming of age in the urban North while shouldering the expectations and aspirations of their uprooted parents. Anyone new to Chatelain’s work should also check out her next and equally original book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, a study of the deeply mixed legacy of McDonald’s restaurants in Black neighborhoods that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for History.

By Marcia Chatelain, Marcia Chatelain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked South Side Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In South Side Girls Marcia Chatelain recasts Chicago's Great Migration through the lens of black girls. Focusing on the years between 1910 and 1940, when Chicago's black population quintupled, Chatelain describes how Chicago's black social scientists, urban reformers, journalists and activists formulated a vulnerable image of urban black girlhood that needed protecting. She argues that the construction and meaning of black girlhood shifted in response to major economic, social, and cultural changes and crises, and that it reflected parents' and community leaders' anxieties about urbanization and its meaning for racial progress. Girls shouldered much of the burden of black aspiration,…


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