100 books like The Dark Frontier

Harris is such a literary and historical giant that it’s easy to take him for granted. The tension in the recent film, Munich: The Edge of War, was palpable, but V2 is even more gripping, an eye-opening and rattling good yarn set over a period of just a few critical days at a time when the Nazis were increasing their deadly rocket attacks on England.

I especially enjoyed how artfully the two stories were woven together, as it portrays the crisis from two opposite standpoints: the male German engineer drawn into the nightmarish world of Hitler’s fanaticism, and that of the astute WAAF back in Blighty with an eye for detail and poor taste in men. Harris tells their separate stories with verve and compassion, as they both struggle with life and death decisions in the midst of drudgery and the fear of defeat. In particular, it highlights how ‘backroom’… show more.

Spring 1943. Before dawn off the Spanish coast, a cadaver dressed in the uniform of the Royal Marines is placed in the waves. He carries a briefcase containing details of a planned Allied invasion of Greece. The Nazis find the body and its ‘secrets’ and are convinced they have been lucky enough to foil the British plans, but nothing is what it seems. 

This remarkable story of espionage is true. It was an elaborate forensic hoax devised by British intelligence to deceive the enemy, feeding them a false story, thereby allowing troops to invade Sicily instead. It is related with charm and humour by Ewen Montagu, a key figure in the operation. Its elegant, pared-down prose reads like one of Eric Ambler’s novels as it tells how regular chaps used wit and scientific know-how to fight back against the Nazi war machine. And won. Operation Mincemeat, as it was dubbed,… show more.

A Buchanesque MacVicar spins a dark tale of adventure against the charming Scottish scenery of Argyll in this 1939 yarn. Our hero is Alastair Campbell, Glasgow-based journalist and bachelor, whose plans for a cruise along the West Coast of Scotland are thwarted by a storm. Soon, he is stranded on a Hebridean island with a charming young woman – and nefarious individuals who are clearly Up To No Good. After a body turns up, they investigate and uncover a dastardly scenario to spread devastation and panic on Armistice Day (hence the title). Campbell is an appealing ‘lead’, as he doubts his ability yet nonetheless prevails. The villains are chilling, men and women alike, particularly when Campbell imagines the havoc wreaked by their plot in a fine piece of prescient writing. There are boats, guns, and planes galore, all described in expert and compelling detail that lend verisimilitude to a rip-roaring… show more.

J.B. Priestley produced this engrossing spy chiller written and set in the desperate days of 1942 when the future looked grimmer by the hour. A grieving middle-aged engineer goes undercover in a grimy Midland town where vital aircraft are being built. British Intelligence suspects lurking Nazi agents and saboteurs, while it is up to our man to track them down. As he investigates, it seems that everyone is hiding secrets and soon he is embroiled in a tangle of deceit and murder. The book was ahead of its time. The protagonist is quite the modern anti-hero, struggling with inner demons, echoed by the endless grind of the blackouts, and I was gripped by the way he ultimately finds something worth fighting for. The story is dazzlingly put together, filled with contemporary details and deep menace that result in a classic page-turner, ideal for a binge read on a dark afternoon.… show more.

I think this book is a masterful work that offers insights into the human experience. Through its richly imagined worlds and characters, the story invites readers to ponder timeless questions about society, relationships, individuality, and the pursuit of a better world.

I liked exploring the two worlds in the story, one a society where individual achievement is overshadowed by the collective good, and another was a portrayal of capitalism with hierarchy and stark social divisions. The protagonist finds himself alienated from both worlds, unable to reconcile his ideals with the realities he encounters. 

I liked the way the story confronts fundamental questions about the nature of society and the individual's place within it.

Fleeing the Nazi Anschluss, Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (famous for the wave equation and his eponymous cat) took refuge at Trinity College in Dublin. To thank his hosts, Schrödinger delivered a series of ground-breaking lectures in 1943, later published as What is Life? Schrödinger’s thought-provoking queries, originating from quantum mechanics, paved the way for the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. After the war, in subsequent lectures published as Mind and Matter, Schrödinger tackled a deeper subject: the nature of consciousness.

Together, these classics are unparalleled in what they imply about life and its most remarkable attribute: sentience.

Troubling aspects of Schrödinger’s personal life make it tempting to exclude this work. Ultimately, it's crucial to separate the profound message from the messenger, who was deeply flawed.

Don’t let the length (over 900 pages) of this biography put you off. Instead, immerse yourself in the slow and powerful current of author Richard Westfall’s superbly written and richly detailed portrait of the skills, achievements, and obsessions of the singular genius that was Isaac Newton. Westfall explains in a masterful way Newton’s mathematics, his physics, his heretical theology, his fixation with alchemy, his activities running the Royal Mint, and his disputes with other scientists. These features, and Westfall’s evocative description of the intellectual and social milieu of Newton’s 17th-century world, make Never at Rest a compelling read.   

Yes, yes, history is an unbroken river of themes, but it’s also a chain of pivotal dramatic episodes. Dolnick gives us one such moment. In 17th century Europe, within two generations, a collection of brilliant oddballs invented science. They’re people, so they’re doing the sorts of things people do, elbowing and shoving one another to find the ultimate truth before the other guy. I appreciate that in the course of reading such a wonderfully enjoyable story, I somehow learn a great deal about the truth they were seeking, the underlying mathematical order of the universe in which they believed.

Dirac was one of the creators of modern quantum physics. His theoretical contributions are astonishing in their insights and their power. He was, as the title says, a very strange man: painfully shy, laconic in the extreme, and socially awkward. He spoke so rarely that his colleagues at Cambridge used to joke that “a dirac” was a unit of measurement equal to one word an hour. Farmelo is a fine writer and gives a lay reader a deep understanding of why Dirac is considered such a giant in the field.

Aliens crash-land near a medieval European village during the Black Death, and establish friendly relations with the villagers- but Earth’s food lacks vital nutrients for them, and the plague creeps closer every day. Wonderful, heart-wrenching book about communities during times of crisis and disaster, and about the fundamental humanity that crisis brings out in us—even towards those who aren’t human.