Fans pick 100 books like Memoirs of an Invisible Man

This is an absolute classic of the genre. Brooks draws in various ‘accounts’ of a recent zombie outbreak and structures them as if the broad details are common knowledge to his in-universe audience.

This approach means the real-world reader is always discovering new details and nuggets of information in a way that really whets the appetite while increasing the sense of horror at the way events unfolded in a world that isn’t quite our own.

Legends are made of powerful stuff, and nothing has greater power than a total flip in perspective. I still recall the gut-punch end to this book, though it’s been decades since I read it. 

Robert Neville is a vampire hunter by day and a tormented man by night. As seemingly the only living human in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, Robert faces depression, isolation, alcoholism, and his undead neighbor, Ben Cortman, who appears outside Robert’s front door each night chanting, "Come out, Neville."

But when Robert is finally captured, and the truth of his situation is revealed, he gets a good look at the world through the eyes of the undead and is forced to ask himself, who am I? What have I become? 

Superheroes and zombies seem like a terrible combination, but Peter Clines makes a fascinating story of zombies destroying the Earth but for a collection of superhero guarded survivors.

It's a bit like The Walking Dead combined with the Justice League, though the power level of the people involved is closer to Marvel's street level. The first book has some crass jokes that get dropped from the sequels but not enough that I didn't enjoy it. I have to say my favorite characters are Saint George (a Superman analog) and Stealth (a female Batman).

Werewolf stories are pretty straightforward, usually only varying as to whether or not the human can control their wolf-half. Not so with Howling Mad. David weaves a unique tale, not of a man cursed so that the full moon turns him into a wolf, but of a wolf cursed so that the full moon turns him into a man. As a comic book writer and novelist, David is known for his wit—and Howling Mad has plenty of that—but the highlight is David’s adroit examination of this trope reversal, from how the new man-wolf deals with suddenly having opposable thumbs to the effects of “civilized” society on the beast’s basic nature. I was so struck by the clever premise that it influenced some of my own supernatural tales.

This 2021 book, the latest in the Rosenberg oeuvre, not only recounts the history of what happened to the Rosenbergs but chronicles past historical accounts. One of the most important legacies of this literature is to remind us how all events are historically grounded. The Schneirs wrote that the Rosenberg trial “was a product of its times, displaying in microcosm many of the prevalent sociopolitical assumptions and preoccupations of the day.” The same could be said of the books by the Schneirs, the Meeropols, and Doctorow, which viewed the Rosenbergs through the sympathetic prism of American progressivism of the 1960s and 1970s.

Sebba also explores the enduring mystery of the “single-minded” Ethel Rosenberg, a “tragic figure” who herself committed no espionage but orphaned her sons rather than naming names or implicating her husband.

This is a work of historical fiction about World War II and I felt totally immersed in the moment.

13-year-old Bertie, his friends, and his rescue pup get busy learning ciphers and solving puzzles amid the falling bombs in order to find a missing woman. The author weaves in historical figures and events that add to the authentic feeling of this action-packed read. This is one of my favorites!

Carole P. Roman has hit a home run with this nonfiction book. It paints an intriguing picture of the life of spies during World War II. Roman details the training, weapons, and tools used in spy craft. I found the chapters featuring biographical portraits fascinating. Chef Julia Child and author Graham Greene operated undercover. Roman discusses double agents and the Native Americans who broke the Japanese code. I would recommend this book to children who love adventure, espionage, and history. It’s a perfect read for middle-grade students, but an eye-opener for adults as well.

On finishing my book, I wanted to write a companion novel, based this time in Paris. My inspiration for the lead character in that book was Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, an extraordinary woman who led the Alliance network in France, operating on behalf of SIS, as MI6 was then known. Her handler Sir Kenneth Cohen described her as the ‘textbook beautiful spy,’ but her intelligence and courage marked her out even more. Marie-Madeleine lived a life on the run, operating under the radar via a string of false identities, and even escaping imprisonment. Lynne Olsen’s riveting account tells the story of Marie-Madeleine’s terrifying existence in Nazi-occupied France, and of a heartbreaking love affair. 

This book certainly made me stop and think about how I write, and I have altered my style since. Set in modern-day London, the Slow Horses (failed MI6 operatives forced to work in Slough House) under the tutelage of Jackson Lamb eke out a futile existence. The heads of MI6 hope the demeaning work will make them walk away and leave the espionage world. Lamb is one of the great characterizations, a burnt-out spy who still has acres of tradecraft and protects his team against the outside forces at a political and international level. A string of random terrorist attacks around the UK seem to tie in with a show-boating politician riding the Brexit wave and the team goes rogue to find out the connection. A book as far away from Bond as possible but brilliantly written and plotted.

Biography, especially this riveting biography, is a great way to learn about intelligence in World War II. Bradley looks into dark corners to uncover the almost unbelievable truth about a Soviet spy in the front office of American spy chief William J. Donovan. Like James Grafton Rogers, Bradley tells us what it was like to live and work in Washington during World War II—but with another layer of intrigue and, yes, treachery. 75 years after the fact we tend to forget that a group of privileged Americans like Lee—a Rhodes Scholar and Wall Street lawyer distantly related to Robert E. Leen—once thought that communism might be a viable alternative to capitalism and the economic misery of the depression.