100 books like The Expats

I am Australian but have lived in four other countries – England, Nigeria, USA, and Qatar – so I love reading about life overseas. How does the weather impact daily life, from what people wear to the available activities? How does culture influence behavior? Food, from what’s in the supermarket to the menus at local restaurants, can change the flavors and smells in homes and on the street. And what about alcohol? Does banning wine and spirits impact the vibe? (Hint: yes, it does!) These factors play out in my writing, and I love seeing how other authors portray place on the page. 

I am Australian but have lived in four other countries – England, Nigeria, USA, and Qatar – so I love reading about life overseas. How does the weather impact daily life, from what people wear to the available activities? How does culture influence behavior? Food, from what’s in the supermarket to the menus at local restaurants, can change the flavors and smells in homes and on the street. And what about alcohol? Does banning wine and spirits impact the vibe? (Hint: yes, it does!) These factors play out in my writing, and I love seeing how other authors portray place on the page. 

I am Australian but have lived in four other countries – England, Nigeria, USA, and Qatar – so I love reading about life overseas. How does the weather impact daily life, from what people wear to the available activities? How does culture influence behavior? Food, from what’s in the supermarket to the menus at local restaurants, can change the flavors and smells in homes and on the street. And what about alcohol? Does banning wine and spirits impact the vibe? (Hint: yes, it does!) These factors play out in my writing, and I love seeing how other authors portray place on the page. 

I am Australian but have lived in four other countries – England, Nigeria, USA, and Qatar – so I love reading about life overseas. How does the weather impact daily life, from what people wear to the available activities? How does culture influence behavior? Food, from what’s in the supermarket to the menus at local restaurants, can change the flavors and smells in homes and on the street. And what about alcohol? Does banning wine and spirits impact the vibe? (Hint: yes, it does!) These factors play out in my writing, and I love seeing how other authors portray place on the page. 

I’m a career financial and business journalist, only recently turned novelist. I’m obsessed with the way that history repeats itself in the financial markets and that we never seem to learn our lessons. Fear and greed have always driven the behavior of bankers, traders, and investors; and they still do today, only barely inhibited by our regulatory system. I want to help people understand how markets work, and I like combining fiction with fact to explain these systems and how they’re abused. With that in mind, I work during the day as a reporter at NPR and by night as a scribbler of historical fiction with a financial twist.

I moved around non-stop as a kid, attending a dozen schools by age eleven. As a result, once I stayed put long enough to make real friends, I stuck to them like glitter glue. As a reader and writer, I can’t get enough stories about female friendships, whether rock-solid or fraying. My latest novel involves childhood friends whose loyalty is stretched like a pair of latex gloves yanked off at a crime scene. The book grew out of a meme I saw on Facebook, captioned: “Real friends help you hide the bodies”. My first thought was: who would I help? Straight off, I thought of my oldest friends.

My travels have been quite adventurous, purposely or by accident. I’ve visited 32 countries, 5 of them Communist. I look below the surface. I love the jungle and even Mexican police. My young reader novels have elements of crime. I knew and know a lot of tough guys and use elements of them in my characters. Crime weaved through much of my 32-year firefighting career. Firefighter crime thrillers are rare. Firefighters do come in contact with crime: bomb threats, meth labs, child abuse, arson of all sorts, murder, assaults, drownings, and as they say ‘much, much more’. I’m glad to be retired.

I’ve worked for two decades as a researcher and campaigner to expose the tax behaviour of unscrupulous multinational companies and wealthy individuals, and the central lesson is that we only make progress when the narrative shifts: when the public and policymakers start to appreciate just how much damage is done to our societies by the professional enablers of tax abuse. These books are real narrative-shifters, showing the world to us in ways we need to see, and making it a pleasure. 

I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.

I’ve been writing crime novels and TV shows for years. For TV, I wrote for Law & Order, Pretty Little Liars, CSI: Miami, and several other crime shows. In the book world, I used to write amateur sleuth novels, and now I write thrillers. My favorite form of relaxation is to get a cup of tea, put my feet up, and read a great thriller. They inspire me. As I read, I study how they’re structured. There’s nothing I appreciate more than a twist I didn’t see coming, a morally good character who turns out to be evil, or a flawed character who ultimately turns out to be good.