Here are 100 books that First Strike fans have personally recommended if you like
First Strike.
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I write about flawed characters as a reflex. I’m more interested in exploring the journey of an alcoholic monster hunter with literal and figurative demons than a white knight. Throughout my life, I’ve seen the effects of substance abuse up close, and while difficult, it helped me find the humanity in flaws. I choose to write about those flaws with a humorous bend, because life is far too long to go through without jokes. As a result, I gravitate towards pithy antiheroes and dark comedy. To feel a character’s pain is human, to laugh in the midst of their darkest moments is divine.
Stephen King’s Dark Tower series might be uneven at the end, but the beginning is masterful.
Roland, a dusty old cowboy on the edge of reality, is the prototypical antihero. He doesn’t care much for other people, he’s got a dark past, and I wanted to follow every dusty step of his journey. The broken pieces of Roland are what make The Dark Tower series unique—that and some astral plane travelling shenanigans. With each dark deed or questionable decision, I wanted to know more about Roland and what led him to that point.
It’s difficult to stay grounded in a world with interdimensional travel and monsters, but I always felt like I had one foot planted in humanity through Roland.
The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.
'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.' The iconic opening line of Stephen King's groundbreaking series, The Dark Tower, introduces one of his most enigmatic and powerful heroes: Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.
Roland is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey toward the mysterious Dark Tower, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.
On his quest, Roland begins a friendship with a kid from New York named Jake, encounters an alluring woman and faces…
I remember finding an old Edgar Rice Burroughs book on my grandfather’s bookshelf when I was nine years old. I opened the pages and started to read. From that moment, I was hooked on anything that had to do with fictional worlds. Books became my passion, gobbling them up by the hundreds. Also, attending a private Catholic elementary school, I constantly heard the tales of Revelations and the End Times. These two reasons instilled in me a passion for post-apocalyptic books and led me to write in the same genre. I hope you enjoy these books on the list as much as I have!
What a page-turner! I felt like I was on a roller coaster hanging on for dear life. I'm pretty sure I read the majority of this book with my mouth hanging open. I absolutely love the characters and immediately fell in love with their plight. The first book to a fantastic series!!!
In the middle of the coldest winter on record, an EMP destroys the nation’s power grid. No electricity. No cars or phones. Worst of all: No heat. The country is plunged into instant chaos.
But for twenty-six-year-old Hannah Sheridan, it’s the best day of her life. For the last five years, she’s been the captive of a sadistic psychopath—until the EMP releases the lock of her prison. B
attered but not broken, she emerges from her underground cell into a hostile winter landscape with no way to call for help, no vehicle that will drive, armed with nothing but the…
I remember finding an old Edgar Rice Burroughs book on my grandfather’s bookshelf when I was nine years old. I opened the pages and started to read. From that moment, I was hooked on anything that had to do with fictional worlds. Books became my passion, gobbling them up by the hundreds. Also, attending a private Catholic elementary school, I constantly heard the tales of Revelations and the End Times. These two reasons instilled in me a passion for post-apocalyptic books and led me to write in the same genre. I hope you enjoy these books on the list as much as I have!
The new version of Maximum Ride is fantastic!! I ate this book up in one weekend. I haven't read like this since I read the Maximum Ride series. I think there were some parallels drawn from real life into the book. With everything over the last few years, a lot of things seem hopeless and lost, just like in Hawk. I can’t wait for the next book!
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Maximum Ride lost her fight to save the world. But from the ashes of the old world, a phoenix has risen... she calls herself Hawk.
Hawk doesn't know her real name. She doesn't know who her parents were, or where they went. The only thing she remembers is that they told to wait on a street corner until they came back for her.
That was ten years ago.
The day that she finally gives up waiting is the moment her life changes for ever. Because the promise becomes reality: someone is coming for her.
I remember finding an old Edgar Rice Burroughs book on my grandfather’s bookshelf when I was nine years old. I opened the pages and started to read. From that moment, I was hooked on anything that had to do with fictional worlds. Books became my passion, gobbling them up by the hundreds. Also, attending a private Catholic elementary school, I constantly heard the tales of Revelations and the End Times. These two reasons instilled in me a passion for post-apocalyptic books and led me to write in the same genre. I hope you enjoy these books on the list as much as I have!
Not as popular as some of the above-named authors but still an incredible storyteller. The characters in this book fight for survival against roaming gangs and a bitter winter storm. Great dialogue and intriguing character development make you think you’re facing the same dangers and gasping for breath. The first book of a thrilling series!!!
The nation goes dark. Technology fails. Help isn’t coming.
An EMP has destroyed the nation’s power grid.
The country is plunged into chaos during one of the coldest midwest winters on record.
Pre-med student Raine Caldwell is in a race against time. Eight hundred miles from home and separated from her parents, Raine is forced onto the dangerous streets of St. Louis, Missouri.
A storm is brewing…
While fires rage, deadly gangs roam the streets. After joining a group of fellow survivors, it becomes a fight for survival as they race to escape the city before the violence and a…
Why do I have expertise in end-of-the-world scenarios? Well, I am a person living in the 2020s who reads too much. But more than that, I’ve had an interest in space exploration and history for as long as I can remember. While those two might seem like completely unrelated fields, it gives me a wider view of our world in the sense of where we are and where we are going. Civilization is not always a straight line upward. And when it dips down… well interesting things happen. Saturnius Mons specifically blends my love of Roman history with my interest in humanity’s future.
Humanity has been divided between the Haters and the Unchanged. The Haters fly into a blind rage and attempt to kill any Unchanged they happen upon. But after the resulting nuclear war, there are only a few Unchanged left in the world. But Danny can hold the Hate and he uses this profound ability to blend with the Unchanged and find their hidden acloves. But as their numbers dwindle, Danny’s loyalty to the Haters comes into question. Besides just being an entertaining and chilling story, Moody sheds light on the destructive nature of an emotion that I see as the defining trait of our new societal landscape.
Movie rights in the HATER series were snapped up by PAN'S LABYRINTH/HELLBOY director Guillermo del Toro and producer Mark Johnson (The NARNIA movies). Perfect for fans of HBO's THE WALKING DEAD, the series reaches a shattering conclusion...The war which has torn the human race apart is finally nearing an end. The population has been devastated, and the earth has been reduced to a poisoned ruin. Most of the towns and cities are uninhabitable, and with the country in the grip of a savage nuclear winter, both Haters and Unchanged alike struggle to survive. Hundreds of Hater fighters have settled in…
I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction – everything from epic and paranormal fantasy to space opera and dystopian thrillers – and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. My day job is in local government. I’ve seen how government decisions can impact the trajectory of a society, and I’m particularly drawn to stories that explore that theme. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (supernatural fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic).
This book equally moved and unnerved me because its premise is all too possible. It’s a brilliantly written end-of-the-world story with an understated sense of menace and an unmistakable Australian flavour.
The novel offers an intimate and fascinating first-person view of what happens to a ‘normal’ neighbourhood when life as we know it irrevocably changes – in this case through a nuclear winter. Often, apocalyptic/dystopian stories skim over the transition from order to chaos/social breakdown, and Claire handles it in a way that’s unsettling by its understatement.
I cared deeply about these characters. And while this novel is gritty, it’s also a story of hope and what it means to survive.
This haunting dystopian novel thrillingly and realistically looks at a nuclear winter from an Australian perspective.
For Fin it’s just like any other day—racing for the school bus, bluffing his way through class, and trying to remain cool in front of the most sophisticated girl in his universe. Only it’s not like any other day because, on the other side of the world, nuclear missiles are being detonated. When Fin wakes up the next morning, it’s dark, bitterly cold, and snow is falling. There’s no internet, no phone, no TV, no power, and no parents. Nothing Fin’s learned in school…
I’m an American-born cartoonist who’s been living and working in Montreal since 2015. My mother is from Quebec, and when I immigrated here I was looking to reconnect with my cultural roots. Reading graphic novels from here was a huge part of how I got to know my adopted community. I might be a bit biased, but I have to say Quebec has one of the world’s most vibrant comic arts scenes; a blend of American comic books mixed with Franco-Belgian bande dessinée. With more and more graphic novels from Quebec getting translated into English you’re sure to find something you’ll dig, whether you’re looking for slice-of-life or science fiction.
What’s worse than a Montreal winter? How about four straight years of Montreal winter! While a nuclear power plant melting down and blanketing the metropolis with irradiated snow might seem like a horrible situation, Cab plays this apocalypse for laughs. Gertrude, a superhumanly-strong, snowmobile-piloting delivery driver, has to face off against irradiated beasts, gargantuan snowflakes, and even the withering scorn of fashionable Mile End hipsters. Maniacally creative and drawn with a light touch.
Nothing's rougher than a Canadian winter . . . except maybe one that never ends!
It's been nine years since an accident at a nuclear power plant plunged Montreal into an eternal winter; the city is now blanketed 365 days a year in radioactive snow. But life goes on for folks like Flavie Beaumont, a mail courier on snowmobile who's carved out a pretty normal life for herself, despite mutant crushes, eclectic urban fauna, and unrelenting meteorological events of unprecedented force. It turns out surviving nuclear winter is hard . . . but it's possible surviving your twenties is even…
I'm a lawyer (Harvard Law School) who loves to write. My books reflect my eclectic interests. I've written nonfiction books about John Kennedy’s presidency, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, CBS Founder William S. Paley, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Pearl Harbor. Each of my nonfiction books tries to focus on something with respect to a particular person or event that had not been addressed in detail in any other book. I've also written a thriller (Deadly Risks) which revolves around JFK’s assassination and can be likened to John Grisham’s book, The Pelican Brief.
Admiral Husband Kimmel, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, was stationed in Honolulu in 1941 (and planning to play golf with Army Lieutenant General Walter Short, commander of US military installations, in the early morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941). In response to the outcry in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack, Kimmel was relieved of his command and publicly accused of dereliction of duty because American forces were so ill-prepared for the Japanese attack. In this well-researched book, Summers and Swan conclude that military commanders in Washington and elsewhere failed to share intelligence information with Kimmel (and Short) and that Kimmel’s dismissal was nothing more than an attempt to find a scapegoat.
On the seventy-fifth anniversary, the authors of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Eleventh Day unravel the mysteries of Pearl Harbor to expose the scapegoating of the admiral who was in command the day 2,000 Americans died, report on the continuing struggle to restore his lost honor-and clear President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the charge that he knew the attack was coming. The Japanese onslaught on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 devastated Americans and precipitated entry into World War II. In the aftermath, Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, was relieved of command, accused of negligence and dereliction of…
I heard a Jordan Peterson interview in which he boiled down my entire life’s struggle in a single phrase. The interviewer was pushing Jordon on the subject of male toxicity. Jordon said something like, “If a man is entirely unwilling to fight under any circumstance, he is merely a weakling. Ask in martial arts trainer and they will tell you they teach two things – the ability to fight and self-control. A man who knows how and also knows how to control himself is a man.”
James Jones's brilliant debut novel must have had a great effect on me because I admit, in many ways, my book covers the same ground – how does a man maintain honor and dignity when constrained to live his life by the choices of other, and much more powerful men? I suppose the difference between our two themes is that the question in my book is about those same choices but wrapped in the question of race. Jones’s characters, while in the military, were dealing with personal issues. My Corporal Buck is dealing with an issue about which all of America is on fire.
From Here to Eternity is 70 years old. I read it in 1969, an eternity ago and it has lasted with me from there to here. When I was in the Marine Corps I knew everything that was happening to me. But I didn’t know what…
Prew won't conform. He could have been the best boxer and the best bugler in his division, but he chooses the life of a straight soldier in Hawaii under the fierce tutelage of Sergeant Milt Warden. When he refuses to box for his company for mysterious reasons, he is given 'The Treatment', a relentless campaign of physical and mental abuse. Meanwhile, Warden wages his own campaign against authority by seducing the Captain's wife Karen - just because he can. Both men are bound to the Army, even though it may destroy them.
Walter R. Borneman is an American military and political historian. He won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize in Naval Literature for The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King, a national bestseller. Borneman's other titles include Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona; MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific; and 1812: The War That Forged a Nation.
Perceptions of the first several months of World War II in the Pacific war usually focus on Douglas MacArthur’s actions in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy and its British, Dutch, and Australian allies waged a largely unsung and losing battle against the Japanese onslaught to control the natural resources of the Netherlands East Indies.
Rising Sun, Falling Skies scrutinizes the learning curve of allied command, the hopelessness of facing numerical superiority, and the grim awakening that airpower plays a decisive role no matter how powerful the fleet. Cox’s portraits of admirals Thomas Hart and Karl Doorman beg a host of intriguing “what ifs.”
Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. The Japanese forces then continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of Singapore, and taking resource-rich islands in the Pacific in their own blitzkrieg offensive. Allied losses in these early months after America's entry into the war were great, and among the most devastating were those suffered during the Java Sea Campaign, where a small group of Americans, British, Dutch, and Australians were isolated in the Far East - directly in the path of the Japanese…
