Here are 34 books that Resolute Aim fans have personally recommended if you like
Resolute Aim.
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By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.
In My Name Is Resolute, the main character, Resolute Talbot, is not an immigrant, but she is on the move, captured in Jamaica as a child in 1729 and taken by ship to New England to be sold into slavery. Resolute’s story takes the reader to fascinating places, including the American colonies as they begin to boil with pre-Revolutionary fervor. The era and events are challenging enough and made even more interesting as the narrator’s voice changes to reflect the change from child to woman. Highly recommended.
Nancy Turner burst onto the literary scene with her hugely popular novels These Is My Words, Sarah's Quilt, and The Star Garden. Now, Turner has written the novel she was born to write, this exciting and heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution. The year is 1729, and Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family in Jamaica, and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister are sold into slavery in New England and taught the trade of spinning and weaving. When Resolute…
My love of British crime fiction began when, as a young teen, I discovered Agatha Christie on the shelves of my local library. With Scottish grandparents, I was already well indoctrinated in the “everything British is best” theory, but it was as a student at St. Clare’s College, Oxford, that I fell totally under the spell of the British Isles. No surprise, then, that my Kate Hamilton Mystery series is set in the UK and features an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. I love to read the classic mysteries of the Golden Age as well as authors today who follow that tradition.
For my last pick, I’ve chosen a novel published near the end of the Golden Age (roughly the 1920s through the 1950s). Author and solicitor Michael Gilbert set his novel in the chambers of Horniman, Birley, and Craine. After the death of the firm’s senior partner, a hermetically sealed deed box is opened, revealing the corpse of Marcus Smallbone, a co-trustee with the late Mr. Horniman of the valuable Ichbod Trust. With the help of newly qualified solicitor Henry Bohun, Chief Inspector Hazelrigg sorts through a maze of lies and misdirection to uncover the surprising perpetrator and motive. Martin Edwards, in the foreword to the Poisoned Pen Press edition, said, “The book blends in masterly fashion, an authentic setting, pleasingly differentiated characters, smoothly readable prose, and a clever puzzle.”
Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction.
"A first-rate job"—New York Times
"A classic of the genre"—Guardian
Horniman, Birley and Craine is a highly respected legal firm with clients drawn from the highest in the land. When a deed box in the office is opened to reveal a corpse, the threat of scandal promises to wreak havoc on the firm's reputation—especially as the murder looks like an inside job. The partners and staff of the firm keep a…
My fascination with crime fiction has come from reading about it. I have no idea how many novels I have read focused on baddies and the catching of them, but it’s numbering now in the many hundreds. I think the fact that a crime novel can incorporate elements of all other genres – horror, history, romance, the supernatural, etc. are what make them so appealing and add to the joy of writing them. Untangling the threads that make up a crime novel is very satisfying. Maybe in another reality, I would be a detective – I love that idea, but for now, in this bit of the multiverse, I’ll just carry on making them up.
Another series. I really enjoy getting to know characters and look forward to watching them develop over the time that I read about them. Bryant and May are so very unusual. Quirky, and a little bit mad, it has to be said, as are the whole of the Peculiar Crime Unit. The back stories are expertly woven into the narrative and the detail and relating of little-known facts about London are absolutely fascinating. Again I have read the whole series, though as these two elderly detectives grow older and more frail I found them harder to read, but this book – the first in the series was a delight.
When a bomb devastates the office of London's most unusual police unit and claims the life of its oldest detective, Arthur Bryant, his surviving partner John May searches for clues to the bomber's identity. His search takes him back to the day the detectives first met as young men in 1940.
In Blitz-ravaged London, a beautiful dancer rehearsing for a sexy, sinister production of 'Orpheus In The Underworld' is found without her feet. Bryant & May's investigation plunges them into a bizarre gothic mystery, where a faceless man stalks terrified actors and death strikes in darkness. Tracking their quarry through…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
During WW II, my father served in the Navy, and my mother worked as a secretary. My father contracted a lung disease while on service in Africa and died in 1960 when I was seven. My mother happily lived to a ripe old age and enjoyed discussing her wartime experiences. Her stories included ones of going up to London for jolly weekends at a time when the city was being bombed. When I asked her why she took such risks, she said the Germans were not going to stop her having a life. It is in this context that I became fascinated with WW II.
This book is the the first in a gripping and atmospheric wartime thriller series featuring London policeman, Detective Sergeant Troy.
Troy has an unusual background for a police officer in that he is the son of an immensely rich Russian emigré businessman. In this story, set in 1944, a man’s severed arm is found on a bomb site. Troy investigates and discovers the arm belongs to a refugee German scientist working for British intelligence.
This is a marvelous thriller from a writer once selected in a Time all-time list of detective authors to savor.
John Lawton’s debut novelfirst published by Viking in 1995, and now being reissued by Grove Pressis a stunning, war-time thriller that cements his place among the greatest crime writers of our era. The first of the Inspector Troy novels, Black Out singularly captures the realities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama that encapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwar era.
London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city’s black out. When the…
As a coach of elite weightlifters, a lifetime athlete, an outdoorsman, and a passionate advocate for self-reliance, I’m continually searching for quality sources of information that teach, inspire, and drive us to improve our abilities—physical, mental, and emotional—to not just enrich our own lives and bolster our capacity to achieve what’s meaningful to us, but to become better contributors to the world at large and help and inspire others in turn.
Violence of Mind is the only book I can remember immediately reading a second time upon finishing it. While the title is somewhat misleading and will likely dissuade too many people from picking it up, the content is straightforward, intelligent, and far more insightful than any other book in the genre I’m familiar with. Freeborn delivers succinct but critical lessons in self-defense from a philosophical perspective—this isn’t tough guy fantasies squeezed into ill-advised recommendations, but a quest to help us understand how to successfully navigate dire situations in ways that align with our values.
A book covering the topic of self-defense from a shocking, first-hand perspective. The subjects of criminal violence, self-defense, lethal force, mindset, firearms training and concealment have never been introduced so comprehensively in one place. Having successfully sold world-wide in its independently published and distributed paperback form, it is now available on Kindle. "A powerful, gripping, and self-reflective roller-coaster that's part cautionary tale, part how-to book on building the counterpart to the high-order predator, Varg makes no apologies for it being an in-your-face look at real violence from the perspective of that rare someone who can speak from deep personal experience,…
I really enjoy superhero fiction, especially superhero fiction that challenges the usual norms of the superhero genre. I’ve always liked reading comics and moving onto superhero novels has only deepened my love of the genre. The list I’ve created is just the tip of the iceberg for superhero fiction and I highly recommend you check out these books for interesting takes on superheroes and villains.
The best time to kill a superhero is before he becomes one.
Scrawny seventeen-year-old Theodore Conley shocks himself and everyone else by tossing three big bullies around like they are wads of paper and Theo is aiming for the trash can.
Now that he has superpowers, suddenly everyone expects Theo to do great things. He doesn’t want to do anything great, however. It’s too much work and too dangerous. Unless it’s safe and involves Theo finally getting a girlfriend, he’s not interested.
Theo gets more danger than he can handle when a supervillain attacks. In self-defense, Theo is forced to…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
My experience is derived from actual experience and my fight to survive. I found it within me to keep my wits about me and think, think, think about my surroundings and my assailant's movements and vulnerabilities. I waited for the one and only moment I would have to escape. Once free, I sought help and I told my story again and again until I found justice.
Ellen and I participated in the same self-defense course, Impact Personal Safety, in San Diego County, CA. The course taught me how to deliver a knockout punch against an assailant. That skill gave me confidence that I could protect myself and I finally broke out of the protective shell in which I'd been encased since my attack. Her book reinforced the truth that it's okay and, in fact, life-saving, to fight back.
BEAUTY BITES BEAST is not a “how-to” book, it is a “how-come” book. As in, “how-come” every woman and girl needs to know how to defend themselves. They, like all females of other species in the world, are capable of defending themselves and their loved ones — if they learn how. It is not the female’s size, it is her culturally induced ignorance that makes her think she is helpless. BEAUTY BITES BEAST is a clarion call to “sleeping beauties,” so they can wake up and take charge of their own self-defense — emotional, verbal and physical. The book also…
I have spent over twenty years over (fifteen in Texas) recommending crime fiction as a bookseller in a couple of prominent stores. Texas and its writers have always fascinated me. Now that I get to call myself one, I am connected more to the genre literature of my adopted state and have an insider's view as both writer and resident.
The first in Locke’s Highway 59 series, featuring African American Texas ranger Darren Matthews involving two bodies one black, one white that wash up in a small East Texas town.
The story combines procedural, western, and Southern gothic to give an entertaining, human, yet unflinching look at race both past and present. This book enlightened me on how much African Americans contribute to what we call Texas culture.
Waterstones' Thriller of the Month June 2020 Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2020 A Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Political crime fiction of the highest order' Sunday Times
Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise - and all goes dark. Ranger Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his…
I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching Alfred Hitchcock movies and reading Dashiell Hammett—I’m from San Francisco. Then opera got hold of me. So, I dropped out of my PhD program, left Dante’s Inferno behind, and moved to Paris to live a modern-day La Bohème. Because I’m half-Italian, I decided I had to divide my life between Paris and Italy. Mystery, murder, romance, longing, and betrayal were what fueled my passions and still do. To earn a living, I became a travel, food, and arts reporter. These interests and the locales of my life come together in my own crime and mystery novels.
Tangled canals. Crooked alleyways. Slumping palazzi 500-hundred years old. Venice is Italy’s most atmospheric city, right? Maybe. Genoa runs a close second. Both are misunderstood and misrepresented in literature. Outsiders don’t dip below the theme-park surface. Except for the late, great Michael Dibden. Dead Lagoon features Commissario Aurelio Zen, a flawlessly drawn Italian detective. What makes me so sure? Genetics, experience, passion. My mother’s family is Venetian (via Rome). I’ve spent decades diving deep into the Lagoon City. I even did a year of college there. When I follow Zen into those crumbling palaces to unnail their intrigues, or watch him dart down bleak alleys stinking of fish and corruption, I know the writing rings true. Dibden “gets” Italy, unlike other, better-known novelists using Venice as a soft-boiled backdrop.
Among the emerging generation of crime writers, none is as stylish and intelligent as Michael Dibdin, who, in Dead Lagoon, gives us a deliciously creepy new novel featuring the urbane and skeptical Aurelio Zen, a detective whose unenviable task it is to combat crime in a country where today's superiors may be tomorrow's defendants.Zen returns to his native Venice. He is searching for the ghostly tormentors of a half-demented contessa and a vanished American millionaire whose family is paying Zen under the table to determine his whereabouts-dead or alive. But he keeps stumbling over corpses that are distressingly concrete: from…
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
I don’t warm to crime novels where the only point is to find whodunnit. Those that resonate with me are the ones that have an extra dimension. It may be taking me into a world I am unfamiliar with, like bell-ringing or a theatre troupe. Or it could be a richly-evoked setting, like Donna Fletcher Crow’s Celtic Christian background. Or a character whose very flaws make them more gripping, such as Rebus or Wallender. I want to come away feeling enriched and not just pleased that I guessed that it was the butler with the candlestick.
This novel is enriched by being set in the theatre and based on a real dance troupe. We are caught up in an authentically realized experience of a stage company. It is set in Ngaio Marsh’s home country of New Zealand. Her knowledge of the Maori fertility symbol, the tiki, plays a significant role in the plot.
Her detective, Roderick Alleyn. Is also a gentleman, like Lord Peter Wimsey, but this time a professional policeman, who looks like a cross "between a monk and a grandee."
As with Dorothy Sayers, an extra interest is added in later books, with Alleyn’s edgy love affair with the artist Agatha Troy.
The leading lady of a theater company touring New Zealand was stunningly beautiful. No one-including her lover-understood why she married the company's pudgy producer. But did she rig a huge jeroboam of champagne to kill her husband during a cast party?
Did her sweetheart? Or was another villain waiting in the wings? On a holiday down under, Inspector Roderick Alleyn must uncork this mystery and uncover a devious killer...
