100 books like Real

Fifty Shades of Grey was recommended to me on Amazon. It took me a full year before I finally gave in and bought Fifty Shades. And this happened because I was taking part in a radio show discussing the books because of one of my recent releases.

It took me 30 hours to read all three books. It was compelling with Ana, her Inner Goddess, and Christian Grey. I personally have always found the books great escapism from daily pressures.

The book is incredibly polarizing and the vitriol directed at its fans can get exhausting. But in my reading life, Christian’s over-the-top existence and manic living epitomizes rich boys and their toys.

I’m recommending this book because my book is part of the Cocky Hero World and is based on Stuck-Up Suit.

Long before my submission was accepted, I’d read Stuck-Up Suit and loved Soraya’s resilience and determination. She stood up for herself and her beliefs. We always knew her moods by her hair color, which was a great quirk to make her even more memorable and to always give the reader insight into her feelings.

Graham Morgan was a sexy billionaire with a traumatic past. As we got to know him, we realized he’s not stuck up but closed off because of emotional pain. We root for Graham to find happiness with the fiery Soraya, an everyday girl with an extraordinary personality.

This is the fifth and final book in the Grayson Family series and it tells the story of the youngest member, Sierra, and business rival, Blade Navarone.

I enjoyed this billionaire romance because both the hero and the heroine were wealthy. Blade couldn’t use his wealth to impress or intimidate Sierra. They were both stubborn and willful. Maybe, Sierra was doubly so as the baby and only girl in her family. To take a stance against her overprotective brothers, she developed an iron will.

Winning Sierra’s heart saw Blade look deep into himself and show his vulnerable side. This made the story even more powerful than if it had been about a handsome wealthy man who threw money at an underprivileged heroine.

Edward DeLanza and Sofie O’Neil are star-crossed from the moment they meet in 1901 Newport Beach. He’s older, wealthy, and jaded. She’s young, wealthy, and idealistic.

Edward offers her the protection and concern she has lacked her entire life. It was powerful to see his change and how she became the most important person in the world to him. However, at the heart of After Innocence is Sofie’s coming-of-age. She learns to stand on her own two feet and rely on herself.

The infatuation she has for Edward turns into mature love as she comes into her own. After Innocence remains in my top 10 all-time favorite romances.

The mantra for this novel could be that the effort matters more than anything—the attempt, the trying. Winning is something, but it’s not everything. Brooks, a high-school dropout, has to find his way in a world where his closest friend is dying from drug addiction, his household is broken, and street thugs are after him. Against all odds, if you love something and want it, the pursuit of that dream can help those who chase it with enough intensity to possibly overcome the hardship. When so many boxing stories are written with utter bleakness, there is light here.

Heinz takes the day-to-day minutia of being a boxer and makes it something beautiful. While the novel follows Eddie Brown’s quest for the middleweight title, told from the cynical perspective of sportswriter Frank Hughes, what’s really being relayed is everything it takes to build up to the one moment so few people ever face—that one-on-one in the ring you’ve got nowhere to run from the truth, from yourself. Did you prepare enough? Did you give it your all? And just who in the hell are you, really?

"Who was/is the best...?" Perhaps in no sport is the question more asked and argued over than in boxing. And in boxing perhaps none is more qualified to answer the question than Bert Randolph Sugar. And while some fans may express outrage that Rocky Marciano barely makes the top twenty, and Marvin Hagler staggers into the top seventy-five, others will nod eagerly when they read that Harry Greb and Benny Leonard were better than just about anybody. Every fight fan on the planet, and maybe other planets as well, is familiar with the work of this prolific pugilistic pundit whose publications not only inform but entertain as well. Yep, it was Bert who put the Sugar in the sweet science!

“A ghost story, a haunting unto itself”—thus, music journalist Nick Tosches opens his tough tale of the boxer Sonny Liston, two-time heavyweight champion of the world. Born in 1932 into a family of tenant farmers that lived on the border of Arkansas and Mississippi, Liston grew up with violence, reinforced by an early stint in prison. Deftly, Tosches conjures the grim, ruthless culture of professional boxing during the 1950s and 60s. Most poignantly, he shows that Liston never possessed his own life—not in the fields from which he fled as a youth and not as a winner in the ring. He was always owned by white men who operated a fundamentally racist business. For readers interested in Black cultural history, this is a timely book. 

Among the legendary athletes of the 1920s, the unquestioned halcyon days of sports, stands Gene Tunney, the boxer who upset Jack Dempsey in spectacular fashion, notched a 77—1 record as a prizefighter, and later avenged his sole setback (to a fearless and highly unorthodox fighter named Harry Greb). Yet within a few years of retiring from the ring, Tunney willingly receded into the background. To this day, Gene Tunney’s name is most often recognized only in conjunction with his epic “long count” second bout with Dempsey. Living nearly half his life in the state of Connecticut, Mr. Tunney was the first boxer I ever corresponded with. Author Jack Cavanaugh, also from Connecticut, crafts this priceless book.

I first picked up this novel the year I started boxing. It follows the rough lives of Billy Tully and Ernie Munger, two boxers living in separate but parallel worlds—Tully an aging boxer fooled into thinking he can relive a few more glory days and Munger figuring out the hard lessons of what it means to lose. I love how this novel amplifies people eking out difficult lives who spend most of their time in dive bars, cheap motels, and seedy parts of town engaging with dubious, colorful characters. The writing is sparse, direct, sad, and unsentimental. Here Gardner is always pursuing a tough reality.