Here are 99 books that The Bishop's Pawn fans have personally recommended if you like
The Bishop's Pawn.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I had been a long-time screenwriter in March of 2003 when the US invaded Iraq with overwhelming air power, and the TV news showed footage of the “shock and awe.” But I remember thinking, what is it like for the Iraqi people? Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, your country is at war. What is your life now like? Seeking to focus on an ordinary Iraqi family caught up in the war, I soon realized it was too layered for a spec screenplay and wrote it as a novel. It was the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had.
Set in Holland during WWII, this autobiography gives an up close and personal look at life in a German concentration camp.
The vivid descriptions of the horrid living conditions and prevailing illnesses made me feel like I was there. Most memorable was the discussion of the flea-infested straw bedding and the notion of being thankful for the fleas. The author and her sister were devout Christians, but why be thankful for fleas? However, the guards left the women alone because of the fleas.
I will also always remember how the author was given a small bottle of liquid vitamin D and how she never hesitated to share it with the sick, yet it never ran dry. She makes it clear this was God’s work.
It's World War II. Darkness has fallen over Europe as the Nazis spread hatred, fear and war across the globe. But on a quiet city corner in the Netherlands, one woman fights against the darkness.
In her quiet watchmaking shop, she and her family risk their lives to hide Jews, and others hunted by the Nazis, in a secret room, a "hiding place" that they built in the old building.
One day, however, Corrie and her family are betrayed. They're captured and sent to the notorious Nazi concentration camps to die. Yet even…
As a wife of 38 years, mother of two fine adults, teacher of 30 years in art, speech, theatre, art…well painter, and now author, I enjoy hearing about others' stories. Purely by accident, I wrote a small personal story and found that people wanted more… so I wrote more and shazam I had a book. My first book is about childhood experiences and growing up in my normal world. For me it was normal but the outsiders looking in today would see anything but normal. My parents’ careful actions sheltered my sister and me from the outside world's bad influences until things blew up. Then with care they showed us their world of Nazi hunting.
I personally love this book for several reasons; first, I love reading about strong women. Second, the experiences are real-life situations that draw you into Rocky’s life as if it is your own. Her solutions are at times quirky but make you realize that her solution is perfect for her and the search for her perfect solution allowed me to see what I would have done instead. Third, it is at times funny and at times tense. This balance of emotions and actions keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Chicago's award-winning journalist Raquel “Rocky” Peake's investigations have earned her more than a few powerful enemies. Now, some of them want her dead.
Threatened out of her dream job, Rocky heads back home to Texas. Over a decade has passed since she left Twin Creeks. Yet, all those years haven't wiped away the sting of Liam Stone's humiliation and betrayal. But with nowhere else to go, Rocky needs the safety her small hometown can offer.
As her past and present worlds collide, Rocky must choose between running from big city criminals or trusting the handsome devil back home. Either way,…
As a wife of 38 years, mother of two fine adults, teacher of 30 years in art, speech, theatre, art…well painter, and now author, I enjoy hearing about others' stories. Purely by accident, I wrote a small personal story and found that people wanted more… so I wrote more and shazam I had a book. My first book is about childhood experiences and growing up in my normal world. For me it was normal but the outsiders looking in today would see anything but normal. My parents’ careful actions sheltered my sister and me from the outside world's bad influences until things blew up. Then with care they showed us their world of Nazi hunting.
It’s always good to have a book to read during the holidays about the holidays. This book does that and more. The main character Jane’s calamitous life feels like that never-ending Christmas song racing towards the new year. Jane is not sure she will make it in one piece. It is an easy read with lots of action and romance. Because it is divided into 12 crazy moments it is perfect to stop and start this book without having to back up and reread, you just read the next adventure.
On the first day of Christmas, her true life gave to Jane, an arm broken by a door...
With eleven more days until her evil stepsister's wedding, where the only thing uglier than the bridesmaids' dresses is the bride's personality, can Jane Smith go more than twenty-four hours without a disaster?
On the second day of Christmas, her true life gave to Jane, two killer dates...
Jane's calamitous life feels like that never-ending Christmas song, racing toward the new year like a gulf coast hurricane heading to Galveston.
On the third day of Christmas, her true life gave to Jane,…
I read my first romance novel at fourteen. I know, I know, too young to probably read any of these novels. As I grew older, my library expanded beyond Regency Romance and I entered the Contemporary genre. I found my happy place among the modern world. I related more. Who wouldn’t? And yet, my personal life was nothing like the romance novels I read. It was a tragedy. A complete train wreck. Being the single friend among the group was awkward and sometimes lonely. Between my fanciful love of romance novels and the dreaded dating era I experienced, I came up with the concept of The Martini Girl Bar and wrote my first novel.
A hot, cranky contractor, paired with a sassy innkeeper and meddling romantic ghost? What’s not to like? This is book 3 of the Innsborro Triology and it was a hard one for me to pick out of the three of them (because I love them all) but this one wraps up all loose ends and I love a hot, cranky man with a tool belt. The chemistry between Ryder and Hope flies off the pages. I mean the fireworks exuded each time I turned a page. It was amazing. I could not read this series fast enough. Nora Roberts was one of the first romance authors I read way, way…way back (eh, eh..clearing throat). If you ever have a chance to pick up any of her trilogies, this is one I would definitely recommend. It is a very sweet and comical story of three brothers renovating an Inn with their…
The Montgomery brothers have been the talk of Boonsboro, ever since they decided to renovate the old Inn into an intimate and handsome new Bed and Breakfast.
Beckett and Owen have both found love in the process, but what of Ryder, the third Montgomery brother? Can the Inn Boonsboro weave its magic one more time?
Ryder is the hardest Montgomery brother to figure out - with a tough-as-nails outside and possibly nothing too soft underneath. He's surly and unsociable, but when he straps on a tool belt, no woman can resist his sexy swagger. Except, apparently, Hope Beaumont, the innkeeper…
I write about Asia, where I have spent a chunk of my life. My non-fiction reporting has centered on Beijing's territorial ambitions, including its ongoing takeover of the South China Sea, which in a sense was prefigured by the plot of my novel Performance Anomalies. The main character, Cono 7Q, has been pecking at my brain for many years, abetted by my brushes with spooks in the underbelly of Central Asia and China. I use a pen name so my travel in certain countries can be less encumbered.
This novel is set in Kazakhstan, with which I have a longstanding love-hate relationship. But that's not the reason I praise the book. In 2014 The Guardian asked the espionage novelist Charles Cumming, "Has modern technology killed spy thrillers?" Oliver Harris shows us the answer is No. Deep fake videos, manipulated social media, conjured digital backstories, intentionally corrupted data sets, geotracking, wifi tricks, hacked networks-- they're all here in spades, part of the new tradecraft. They don't overwhelm the story, they feed it. Russian militias are positioning to take a bite out of snow-coated Kazakhstan-- our friends in Ukraine will be uncomfortably familiar with at least one part of this tale.
“An absorbing, superbly written novel likely to stand as one of the best spy novels of the year.” —Kirkus, starred review
Elliot Kane reflects the dark side of MI6. He is the instrument of an agency that puts two years and more than £100K into training recruits to steal cars, hack bank accounts, strip weapons, and employ everything from blackmail to improvised explosives in service of Crown and Country. After fifteen years overseas embroiled in events that never make the news, Kane is a ghost in his own life, assuming and shedding personalities with…
I am Rhys Bowen, New York Times best selling author of two historical mystery series and several Internationally best selling historical novels. Many of these take place in and around World War II. I have particularly focused on the bravery of ordinary women, the unsung heroines who risked their lives against impossible odds. My stories take place in France, Italy, as well as, England so these books resonated with me.
I’m not normally a thriller reader, but I’ve loved Cara Black’s Aimee Leduc mystery series, so I tried this. Oh, my goodness. You will hold your breath from page one until the climax.
A young woman suffers unbearable loss and then trains as a sharpshooter, sent to Paris with the goal of assassinating Hitler.
Based on the knowledge that Hitler only came to Paris for three hours and left abruptly, Cara fills in the why for us.
In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light—abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why.
Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of…
I have loved espionage and crime thrillers—beach reads and lit fiction—since my early teens. If the plots involve ordinary people being pulled into extraordinary events with action and romance, then I’m hooked. I have studied Ian Fleming and James Bond and have taught university classes on the subject. I believe that we can learn a lot about our culture, society, and human nature from a well-written novel. I enjoy the flexibility the genre allows and I have added resonant events, history, music, and connections to my Welsh homeland in my novels.
Higgins is probably best known for the brilliant The Eagle Has Landed but it was Solo that inspired my love of thrillers. Solo is an unabashed, fast paced, edge-of-your-seat action thriller. The characters are engaging; Mikali a concert pianist who is an international assassin and Morgan the “amateur,” although a skilled soldier, bereaved father hell-bent on revenge. There is complicated romance, something that always adds an interesting frisson in a thriller, and exotic locales too and it’s evident that Higgins took time to develop his characters, especially Mikali. Higgins so carefully crafted his protagonists that you feel a connection and sympathy for both. Solo is just great storytelling, it made me want to attempt to write such a thriller.
The New York Times–bestselling author of The Eagle Has Landed delivers a pulse-pounding story of a father out for revenge against a master assassin.
John Mikali is known throughout the world as a brilliant concert pianist and playboy. But his true vocation is far more interesting and lucrative: He is a peerless international assassin. His music and fame give him entrée to complete his assignments all over the world without fail. He believes himself truly untouchable—until he makes one fatal mistake.
Col. Asa Morgan is a military man to the bone. A veteran of wars both declared and undeclared, he’s…
I’ve always been drawn to badass female protagonists in fantasy, but the femme fatale has a special place in my heart, and none more so than spies and assassins. Their weapons are a mix of daggers and subterfuge, poison, and seduction. They often straddle the line between cold-hearted villainess and righteous freedom fighter, and that complex morality can make for intriguing internal struggles that coincide nicely with their goal of dismantling corruption, which is not always black and white. Additionally, the aforementioned seduction means that they get to be unapologetically sexual (but only on their terms!). All of this went into Lily’s character.
Tess learns that she is not actually a princess but a decoy, and that the king and queen, who raised her as their child, have hidden the real princess away in a convent for her protection. It would explain why the chancellor taught her the arts of diplomacy, politics, self-defense, and subterfuge and had her build up a tolerance to poison. Despite feeling betrayed by her parents, after they are murdered by a usurper, she has to use all of her skills learned since childhood to reclaim the throne for the actual princess. While Tess is a bit bratty in the beginning (not surprising since she thinks she’s a princess), she develops into a mature (but still snarky) spy. The sequel, Princess at Sea, continues her adventure after restoring her “sister” to the throne.
The Princess Contessa of Constenopolie has just learned of her true identity-that of an orphan adopted and raised as a decoy to protect the real princess. That doesn't make Contessa less of a royal target.
I’ve always been drawn to badass female protagonists in fantasy, but the femme fatale has a special place in my heart, and none more so than spies and assassins. Their weapons are a mix of daggers and subterfuge, poison, and seduction. They often straddle the line between cold-hearted villainess and righteous freedom fighter, and that complex morality can make for intriguing internal struggles that coincide nicely with their goal of dismantling corruption, which is not always black and white. Additionally, the aforementioned seduction means that they get to be unapologetically sexual (but only on their terms!). All of this went into Lily’s character.
Technically two books (Trickster’s Choiceand Trickster’s Queen), this duet follows Alianne, daughter of the heroine Alanna and spymaster George, who is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave to an outcast royal family. The trickster god enlists/coerces her to aid the family’s plot to reseize their throne, which has Aly working as a spy against her homeland. All of Pierce’s books are fantastic, and the Tortall series shaped me as both a reader and writer of fantasy. It was interesting to move away from the heroism and adventure of the earlier books in this universe to a more morally gray protagonist with spy and assassin training who is secretly working for a god. Also, her love interest is a crow turned human, and it works surprisingly well.
When you gamble with kingdoms, all bets are off. Legends are born in this thrilling and New York Times bestselling spy saga from the fantasy author who is legend herself: Tamora Pierce.
Aly is from a family known for great deeds. She is the daughter of Alanna, the famed knight and King’s Champion of Tortall. But even though she is bold and brave, like her mother, her true talents lie on her father’s side, in the art of spying.
When Aly is captured by pirates and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Isles,…
Growing up in a comfortable suburb, I was never encouraged to examine my privilege or to ask questions about our country’s social and economic arrangements. I knew shockingly little about U.S. history beyond the triumphalist narratives of great men and military victories; the dark side of that history usually came in footnotes, and always with the implication that our country’s sins are mere aberrations from its good intentions. I had to learn the most important truths about our history from literature, which shows us the impact that events have on individuals, painting a fuller picture of how America became the country it is, and the terrible price so many people have had to pay.
In 1953, a working-class Jewish couple from Brooklyn was executed for allegedly selling nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Their two young children were orphaned. E. L. Doctorow’s novel about the Rosenbergs is an excruciating examination of these events from the fictionalized perspective of one of those children. Daniel’s point of view—naïve, angry, traumatized—brilliantly illustrates the absurdity and cruelty of American culture when it turns against those who, for reasons of class, race, or religion, have never been fully included in it. I’ve read it a dozen times and still find myself sobbing at the realization of how all the country’s history, all its dreams and delusions about itself and its destiny, were stacked up against this poor pair of nobodies. Their real crime lay in demanding that the United States live up to its ideals, something it has never been able to do.
Based on the trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted of delivering information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel includes a new introduction by Jonathan Freedland in Penguin Modern Classics.
As Cold War hysteria inflames America, FBI agents pay a surprise visit to a Communist man and his wife in their New York apartment. After a trial that divides the country, the couple are sent to the electric chair for treason. Decades later, in 1967, their son Daniel struggles to understand the tragedy of their lives. But while he is…
Interested in
espionage,
spies,
and
criminal investigations?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
espionage,
spies,
and
criminal investigations.
