Here are 100 books that The Drift fans have personally recommended if you like
The Drift.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Crime and espionage are a lifelong fascination for me. I used to think my dad was a spy when I was young because he didn’t talk about work. Turned out he didn’t think I’d be interested in his day as a Quantity Surveyor, my Grandad was a LEO so talking about work wasn’t really a thing. Or they were both spies. Over the years I have made some good friends in the espionage community and various policing agencies and they’re kind enough to share their expertise with me. I’m a big fan of fast-moving stories with intricate plots and action and hopefully they'll draw you in as well. I hope you enjoy the books.
As a writer of a Spy/PI series, this book is super helpful. It’s also good for personal security and I do recommend you get it and read it.
Because of this book, I listen to my gut a lot more when I’m out. I do have a tactical pen on my person whenever I leave home and it is one of the few things that you can have in your handbag on an airplane. It’s an easy read and you can use it as a reference book like I do. If you want to know how to disappear you can find out just how hard that is in a world where cameras are everywhere.
The New York Times bestseller that reveals the safety, security, and survival techniques that 99% of Americans don’t know—but should
When Jason Hanson joined the CIA in 2003, he never imagined that the same tactics he used as a CIA officer for counter intelligence, surveillance, and protecting agency personnel would prove to be essential in every day civilian life.
In addition to escaping handcuffs, picking locks, and spotting when someone is telling a lie, he can improvise a self-defense weapon, pack a perfect emergency kit, and disappear off the grid if necessary. He has also honed his “positive awareness”—a heightened…
Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform.
A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes ofThe Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I readMr. Burnsand saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.
It's the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive?
Mr Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future for America's most famous family.
I’m passionate about the theme of this list because I’ve experienced a lot in life already, even though I’m only 24 years old, and I know about the different situations that these books describe well. I’ve experienced a few traumatic situations later in my life (after I read these books) that these books have, it has turned me into somewhat of a realist over time, and I like to use my own talent of writing and creating characters to create, teach, and make people aware of scary and traumatic situations that can happen to anyone in real life. I hope more people will see the valuable lessons in these books.
I love this book because it teaches about real-life situations like children being orphaned, being homeless, family alienation, and even some survival tips (if that’s what you’re into). I would say that this book is cute, but now that I think about it, it’s really not. It’s cute in some aspects but mainly sad and scary.
I didn’t really understand what was going on in it back when I last read it (I was really young), but I do now.
Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are brothers and sisters. They're orphans too, and the only way they can stay together is to make it on their own. When the children find an abandoned boxcar in the woods, they decide to call it home―and become the Boxcar Children!
I’m a novelist, short story writer, and essayist who has been fascinated by the idea of a zombie apocalypse since my teenage experience of seeing Night of the Living Dead in a noisy movie theater in mid-town Manhattan. My fiction has been nominated twice for Best Story of the Year by the British Fantasy Society. The critic A.J. Kirby called my writings, "Disturbing. Nightmarish. Terrifying. And above all original...we have a genre-storytelling giant in our midst." My fiction has been described as ‘graphically morbid’. Is it for you? Find out.
In 1968 I was a seventeen-year-old kid working in Manhattan. Getting off work each evening, I’d wander around the city. Can you imagine how much fun that would be for a young boy? One night, on 42nd Street, I found a movie theater showing an obscure, black-and-white movie called, Night of the Living Dead. The first thirty minutes, the audience laughed at the film, but as the movie rolled on, and the sense of dread about this group of strangers trapped together in a farmhouse, zombies outside trying to get inside, increased, the theater went silent. The director, George Romero, admitted in interviews his movie was inspired by I Am Legend. Near the end of his life, Romero, with Krauss, wrote this comprehensive history of the zombie apocalypse.
“A horror landmark and a work of gory genius.”—Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman
New York Times bestselling author Daniel Kraus completes George A. Romero's brand-new masterpiece of zombie horror, the massive novel left unfinished at Romero's death!
George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead, creating a monster that has become a key part of pop culture. Romero often felt hemmed in by the constraints of film-making. To tell the story of the rise of the zombies and the fall of humanity the way it should be told, Romero turned…
In order to read, I need fast-paced action, adventure, compelling characters with depthful backstories and motives, and a way of challenging and commentating on the most controversial morals of the present day. To write, I need the exact same thing. Every world I create is filled with action in every chapter, characters with invincible will-strength, and situations that bend the very borders of moral thinking.
The Culling, The Sowing, and The Raising by Steven Dos Santos provides one of the most compelling stories of conflicting choices I have ever encountered. My strongest love for this story is the main protagonist, Lucky, and his stoicism through the hardships that he is forced to endure. This story taught me to always search for the best option in life, and that there is always a choice, even when it seems that there isn’t. From this story, I will always take with me the ability to love fiercely and do what I must for that love.
Recruitment Day is here...if you fail, a loved one will die For Lucian “Lucky” Spark, Recruitment Day means the Establishment, a totalitarian government, will force him to become one of five Recruits competing to join the ruthless Imposer task force. Each Recruit participates in increasingly difficult and violent military training for a chance to advance to the next level. Those who fail must choose an “Incentive”—a family member—to be brutally killed. If Lucky fails, he’ll have to choose death for his only living relative: Cole, his four-year-old brother. Lucky will do everything he can to keep his brother alive, even…
I am a huge fan of logic puzzles and can find myself wasting hours on these. A locked room mystery is similar to a logic puzzle. We are presented with a limited number of characters and a setting where no one can arrive or leave. Thus, the killer must be one of these characters, leaving the reader to try and find the guilty person before the end of the book. As Sherlock Holmes said, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." I love to try my hand at being Sherlock both as a reader and a writer.
During lockdown I was invited to take part in an online event with three other authors, one of whom was Phoebe Morgan.
I read all three authors’ books in preparation and was quickly drawn into The Wild Girls. The locked room in this case is a luxury lodge in Botswana, the cast of characters four friends who have avoided each other for the past couple of years.
And then one of the four invites the others to celebrate her birthday with a trip to Africa, all expenses paid. But when the trio arrives the hostess is nowhere to be seen. Nor are there any staff and the lodge itself is isolated.
And then the promised party becomes a nightmarish fight for survival.
FOUR FRIENDS. A LUXURY RETREAT. IT'S GOING TO BE MURDER.
'An exhilarating, read-in-one-sitting ride' Louise Candlish
'A deadly cocktail of lies, secrets, obsession' T.M. Logan
'A heart-stopping rollercoaster of a read' B A Paris
'This is great. Kept me gripped!' Jane Fallon
'Hold your breath!' Jane Corry
In a luxury lodge on Botswana's sun-soaked plains, four friends reunite for a birthday celebration...
THE BIRTHDAY GIRL Has it all, but chose love over her friends...
THE TEACHER Feels the walls of her flat and classroom closing in...
THE MOTHER Loves her baby, but desperately needs a break...
As a child, all I wanted to read were books about adventure. I also had an adventurous childhood, growing up in the Louisiana swamps with a father who actually hunted alligators and took me with him. As I came of age, I longed to tell stories, and, as they say, it’s best to write about what you know. To date, I’ve penned six novels, all set in the exotic wetlands of Cajun, Louisiana. I feel missionary about this—that my writing gifts allow me to decode my homeplace in a way that makes it easier for outsiders to see the singular niche it occupies on the American landscape.
What are you made of, really? Who hasn’t conjured up a survival scenario in which you are the protagonist? How would you fare?
I loved this book because the author put you on that plane in that horribly inconceivable situation in which you simply know you will likely die. But you don’t—not immediately, anyway. But then the real struggle begins. This book resonates with me because every difficult, life-changing scenario is utterly plausible, unnerving, and interesting.
This award-winning contemporary classic is the survival story with which all others are compared—and a page-turning, heart-stopping adventure, recipient of the Newbery Honor. Hatchet has also been nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, killing the pilot, the sole survivor is Brian. He is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother…
I’ve always loved horror stories, right from when I was a kid, and I first watched Friday the 13th, the ultimate scary movie. The jump scare moment was everything. I spent time studying great suspense writers like Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen King, and R L Stine. I was in awe at how they had me turning the pages, unable to look away! I think more and more children are discovering the fun and thrill of scary stories, and I love nothing more than making sure I try and implement some of these rules, adding in my own originality, too!
It was the first spooky book for kids I’d ever read. I loved every second of it.
Once again, the school vibe was appealing, and watching a group of kids battle a field of scarecrows was spine-chilling stuff. Their friendship strengthened as their school trip began going horribly wrong.
This book kept me on the edge of my seat–I won’t ever look at a scarecrow the same way again!
New York Times bestselling adult author of The Bear and the Nightingale makes her middle grade debut with a creepy, spellbinding ghost story destined to become a classic.
After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think—she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made…
I have hiked mountains in North Korea, slept outside in the Sahara Desert, ridden elephants in Thailand, dogsledded across the Arctic Circle, ridden camels through the Gobi Desert, floated in the Dead Sea, run with the bulls in Spain, hang glided over New Zealand, explored the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam, visited Buddhist temples in South Korea, and caught a glimpse of Nessie while on a boat ride around Loch Ness. I’ve spent most of my career working with the military. I also accepted a presidential appointment at the White House and served as an undercover officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
This book is very disturbing. Well, not the book, but the behavior of the survivors. I felt like I was reading about some sick psychological test in human behavior and the results were troubling.
I just can’t get over the fact that the majority of the survivors chose to stay put and eat the bodies of their dead friends instead of trying to get help. The decisions these survivors made will haunt me for a long time. I cannot help but wonder what choices I would have made, and I pray to God I will never find out.
In October 1972, Nando Parrado and his rugby club teammates were on a flight from Uruguay to Chile when their plane crashed into a mountain. Miraculously, many of the passengers survived but Nando's mother and sister died and he was unconscious for three days.
Stranded more than 11,000 feet up in the wilderness of the Andes, the survivors soon heard that the search for them had been called off - and realise the only food for miles around was the bodies of their dead friends ...
In a last desperate bid for safety, Nando and a teammate set off in…
From a young age, I was not only curious but obsessively driven to find some sort of purpose in life. I was also incredibly sensitive, and always felt I was put on the earth for a reason. My search took me across the world, taking many turns as I grabbed at every opportunity. Thanks to a motorbike accident in Nigeria, scattered pieces of my past suddenly began to fall into place. Finding our own purpose is exploration in its purest form, and I’ve long been fascinated by other curious minds – those that either struggle to find it, and those that find it and live it, or those that turn their back on convention.
The very idea that someone could abandon modern life and live for so long in the middle of a wood in Maine, in the USA, for close to 30 years, without being found, I find incredible. What Christopher Knight decided to do here isn’t a million miles from Chris McCandless in my earlier book recommendation, but he lasted a lot longer and was undoubtedly more successful. It takes a very special kind of person to become a true hermit, but at some time in our lives, almost all of us will wonder what it’s like to disappear, just to leave everything behind and live the most simplest and natural of lives. Christopher may well not be the last hermit – we’ll never know how many are out there, if we’re honest – but what he achieved makes for fascinating reading, a chance to taste what this sort of mystical life…
Could you leave behind all that you know and live in solitude for three decades? This is the extraordinary story of the last true hermit - Christopher Knight.
'This was a breath-taking book to read and many weeks later I am still thinking about the implications for our society and - by extension - for my own life' Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm
'A wry meditation on one man's attempt to escape life's distractions and look inwards, to find meaning not by doing, but by being' Martin Sixsmith, bestselling author of Philomena…
![Cat Connor Author Of [Whiskey Tango Foxtrot]](https://res.cloudinary.com/hzpwrwfdi/image/upload/c_thumb,g_face,h_160,w_160/media/profiles/Cat_Connor_rgp4bs.webp "Cat Connor Author Of [Whiskey Tango Foxtrot]")
