68 books like Proving Ground

I loved the Dexter television series. I was delighted when I found the author’s books. I devoured the series. And when I finished the last one, I just wanted to start over again. I love anything that has police procedures or FBI, etc. With Dexter working with the Miami police department as a blood spatter expert, there was no way I wouldn’t like it, either on television or book series. I never knew what Dexter was going to do next. 

He is charming and likable. If I’d met him face to face, I would never think he was a serial killer. He did have rules, though; he only picked bad people who slipped through the fingers of the judicial system. I highly recommend this book.

I read this book as a contest judge. I’d never heard of the author before. Little did I know that I’d fall in love with Morgan and Lance. Hooked from the first book. Morgan is caught between a rock and a hard place. Tessa, who couldn’t be more ‘girl next door’–also Morgan’s kids’ babysitter–was murdered. Her neighbor needs Morgan to defend her son, who is accused of the murder. Morgan has known him for years and is determined to prove his innocence.  

Morgan asks her friend Lance, an ex-cop turned private investigator, to help solve the murder. I loved how they formed a relationship that developed with each new book of the series. I love series, especially when I love the author. I highly recommend this book. 

I love Sandra Brown. Her books are always full of suspense. This book did not disappoint me. Romantic Suspense is one of my favorite genres. This book is about FBI agent Drex Easton, who is after a sociopath with multiple identities. It kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t wait to turn the page to see what happens. It kept me up late into the night reading. If I can’t put it down, it’s a great book. 

There is always a woman involved, Talia Shafer. Drex believes her husband is the person he’s trailing. I loved how Sandra wove the characters together so the reader didn’t know who would win, the bad guy or Drex. I would recommend it to anyone who loves to read about law enforcement. 

David Baldacci kept me turning pages. I needed to discover what happened to Web London’s FBI Hostage Rescue Team. His job was to make sure they all came out alive. How was he the only one left? It’s something he needs to find out. It was a race against time to clear his name. All the clues lead him back to the alley where it all happened. He realizes when he gets there he is about to meet the assassin who caused the death of his team. 

I love anything with police procedures, especially the good cop being wrongly accused. It doesn’t hurt that I love to read any of David Baldacci's books. This is a book I would recommend to anyone who loves edge of your seat thrillers. 

Gerritsen’s Life Support is a suspense-filled cliffhanger that makes use of spongiform encephalitis, a brain disease caused by prions. Remember Mad Cow Disease? It’s a type of problem that stretches the meaning of “infection.” The story is based on the fictional use of fetal pituitary cells from aborted fetuses to return youthful strength and vigor to elderly rich people. The group making millions from this obtains fetuses from a Mexican village where the cows are dying. A year later, several of their patients die of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an extremely rare human type of spongiform encephalitis. Corpses accumulate and suspense builds during the coverup.

This provides the reader with the background to understand what happens when a pathogen invades both an individual and a society. It’s an absolutely brilliant book by a Nobel laureate scientist, one of my all-time favorites on any subject.

This witty and wryly humorous murder mystery features two amateur sleuths. Maggie, a reporter from up north, is vacationing on an island off the coast of Florida when a murder takes place. She investigates, is stumped, and convinces her irascible boss, editor C. B. Greenfield, to come down and help. Thereafter, she grouses about him as he puts his formidable intellect into solving the mystery.

I return to this book again and again because I find it so smart about the metaphors that people use to talk about cancer. In particular, Sontag picks apart the war metaphors used to describe cancer and its treatment. When I worked in oncology as a nurse, I never talked about treating cancer as “war.” Cancer results from a genetic mistake that causes cells to grow and grow when they are supposed to die. My body is not a battlefield and thinking about myself that way is profoundly disempowering.

This is my favorite book on parasites, which I have recommended hundreds of times in international school and university classrooms worldwide. Zimmer is a science writer with a gift for making a horrific subject fascinating and memorable. Zimmer introduced me to a hidden, parallel universe where parasites control their hosts, manipulate their evolution, hide behind their host’s own bodily chemicals, and on occasion turn them into the living dead.

Interiors expert and host of Interior Design Masters (BBC), Michelle has a fascinating view on interiors, honed through her many years working on magazines alongside her personal interests in Buddhist philosophy, sustainable design, and ‘clean’ living within the home. She goes deep into her research within this title, examining potential pathogens that might be lurking in a typical household (and advising on what to do to mitigate them), alongside thoughtful prose on how you can identify both your aesthetic and wellbeing needs and decorate accordingly.