Here are 100 books that The Pearl fans have personally recommended if you like
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My first memory of storytelling was as a kid reading Jules Verne’s, The Mysterious Island in the basement of my house in The Bronx where I grew up. It transported me to a world of magic and mystery. The effect of that experience wouldn’t seriously take hold for decades when I realized the acting career I’d pursued for twenty years wasn’t where I was meant to be. Fascinated with mysteries and metaphysics and studying the world of past lives and reincarnation led me to incorporate this vast realm into what I write. The Occurrence, my first novel, took these ideas and thread them through a story of politics and spirituality.
Jessica Stern is a fearless scholar and expert on terrorism. She gets in the den with lions.
Her interviews with extremist members from three world religions aren’t an easy read, but it gives incredible insight into the mindset of violence perpetrated in the name
of God. You will feel her fear, and she does it with an exquisite empathy, but never sympathy.
For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Traveling extensively-to refugee camps in Lebanon, to religious schools in Pakistan, to prisons in Amman, Asqelon, and Pensacola-she discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common. Based on her vast research, Stern lucidly explains how terrorist organizations are formed by opportunistic leaders who-using religion as both motivation and justification-recruit the disenfranchised. She depicts how moral fervor is transformed into sophisticated organizations that strive for money, power, and attention. Jessica…
My first memory of storytelling was as a kid reading Jules Verne’s, The Mysterious Island in the basement of my house in The Bronx where I grew up. It transported me to a world of magic and mystery. The effect of that experience wouldn’t seriously take hold for decades when I realized the acting career I’d pursued for twenty years wasn’t where I was meant to be. Fascinated with mysteries and metaphysics and studying the world of past lives and reincarnation led me to incorporate this vast realm into what I write. The Occurrence, my first novel, took these ideas and thread them through a story of politics and spirituality.
Janine Di Giovanni is a daring foreign correspondent with decades of experience covering the Middle East. Her reporting from the trenches is riveting.
She takes you inside the massacres, as she waits in halls, tunnels, and burned-out buildings with those whose stories she came to tell. If it wasn’t true, this book would be read alongside the best thriller writers.
Doing for Syria what Imperial Life in the Emerald City did for the war in Iraq, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front pages of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni gives us a tour de force of war reportage, all told through the perspective of ordinary people-among them a doctor, a nun, a musician, and a student. What emerges is an extraordinary picture of the devastating human consequences of armed…
My first memory of storytelling was as a kid reading Jules Verne’s, The Mysterious Island in the basement of my house in The Bronx where I grew up. It transported me to a world of magic and mystery. The effect of that experience wouldn’t seriously take hold for decades when I realized the acting career I’d pursued for twenty years wasn’t where I was meant to be. Fascinated with mysteries and metaphysics and studying the world of past lives and reincarnation led me to incorporate this vast realm into what I write. The Occurrence, my first novel, took these ideas and thread them through a story of politics and spirituality.
My intrigue with the cost of transformation, mortality, and morality led me to the vampire genre. In my search for books, I discovered an amazing author, Andy Davidson. I was captivated by his book, In the Valley of the Sun. I searched him out to let him know he elevated the vampire genre for me, and his southern gothic setting was extraordinary.
I can’t think of a better recommendation if you’re connected to the world of vampires.
Haunted by his past, Travis Stillwell spends his nights searching out women in West Texas honky-tonks. What he does with them doesn't make him proud, just quiets the demons for a little while. But after Travis crosses paths one night with a mysterious pale-skinned girl, he wakes weak and bloodied in his cabover camper the next morning-with no sign of a girl, no memory of the night before.
When motel-owner Annabelle Gaskin offers the cowboy a few odd jobs to pay his board, he takes her up on the offer. By…
As a writer, I love words and am continuously fascinated by the way they work. In terms of writing manuals, I particularly value the work of writers who combine knowledge and understanding of writing techniques while also providing inspiration and keys to freeing the imagination. I’ve found these books brilliantly complement my professional interest in story structure and how story works, and match my own approach to combining theory with practice; craft with art in my work on story. I hope you find they inspire creativity in you, too.
This book, by Pulitzer prize winner Robert Olen Butler, is in three parts. Transcripts of inspiring lectures are followed by well-edited accounts of individual coaching sessions. These provide very useful nuggets of practical wisdom about unblocking habitual patterns that get in the way of flowing writing practice – habitual patterns that every writer faces and needs to deal with. The stories analysed in the book are found in the final part. An appendix follows, with a story by Butler called ‘Open Arms’, which demonstrates his skill as a writer. A theme that flows through the book is ‘yearning’ – and the book invites you to engage with this theme… with open arms. It’s a work that I go to when I’m stuck – it never fails to inspire.
This comprehensive guide to writing creative fiction collects the lectures of the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Robert Olen Butler, transcribed and edited by Janet Burroway, the author of the classic text on creative writing, "Writing Fiction". "From Where You Dream" reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing fiction as the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Butler offers invaluable insights into the nature of voice…
As an American Southerner, I know things that can be the most nurturing ever, but there's always a cost—emotional, physical, or other. The landscape and nature are where I can always go when I feel heartbroken. And my heart is renewed. Always. Being in tandem with nature calls me. It might be time to look a little closer. If we don't, we might lose more habitat and humanity. This topic or theme haunts me every day. This won't be all I write about, and I hope to have at least another five decades to see more. How amazing to have a sense of history while looking to the future? That walkabout is such a blessing.
What can pain be when you are trying to be free? Who is safe from that when you are trying to be a compassionate person? This book will quell your questions. A girl with scares and scars. Do not be faint of heart on this one. And especially stay away from wells. Really. But also know there is that light that might free us all.
George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the wilds of the North Carolina mountains to build a life together in a rural logging town. But Serena Pemberton is unlike any woman this town has ever seen: overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes and even saving her husband in the wilderness. So when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she is determined that her intensely passionate marriage will not unravel. A course of events unfolds that will change the lives of everyone in their rural community and bring this riveting tale of love and revenge to its shocking reckoning.
As an uncanny child myself, I always gravitated toward reading about the strange—whether in historical accounts or fiction—and as a passably normal adult, I often write from the perspective of “the other.” I never intentionally mix science fiction and paranormal elements into my work…they just happen to be my characters’ truths! So much of what we humans know about our world is filtered through our collective reality, and I love following the connecting threads and plucking at the flaws.
The first literary paranormal suspense I’d ever read, this story absolutely devastated me when I discovered it as a sophomore in college—which is a compliment!
The uncanny child is Paul, a young son so desperate for maternal affection that he races toward madness to win his mother’s favor and quiet the “whisperings” only he can hear. While that premise alone would be sufficient for a moving piece of literature, what affected me so deeply was that the adults who are aware of Paul’s mysterious abilities choose to use them for their own gain, with only superficial attempts to rein in the child’s manic obsession.
Like Lawrence’s other works, this story speaks volumes about class and social expectations, but it’s the idea that a child could be driven to manifest psychic abilities—at the expense of his own health and sanity—that really packs a punch.
Hoping to prove his luck and satisfy his mother's obsession with money, a young boy rides madly atop his rocking horse and predicts the winners of horse races
I have loved crime fiction since encountering it in college. After seeing the Bogart-Bacall version of The Big Sleep, I read the underlying Raymond Chandler novel and was hooked. I devoured Chandler’s other works and moved on to James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, and others. Later I discovered the crime novels of Charles Williams, Day Keene, Gil Brewer, and other “pulp masters.” Loving those novels led me to try my hand at writing crime fiction, and Stark House Press has now published five of my novels with another on the way. My crime-writing career is an unusual path for someone whose M.A. thesis is on Jane Austen!
I like The Crimes of Jordan Wise for several reasons.
First, the author accomplishes the difficult task of making us care about a male protagonist who, although smart and capable, is weaker in some ways than a typical noir “hero.” Second, the author takes the unusual tack of portraying a female protagonist who, while physically attractive and commendably frank, is not as irresistible as femmes fatales usually are.
We know the two are not right for each other, but we cannot help following them as they go down their intersecting paths of darkness with Jordan Wise’s three perfect crimes—a theft and two murders—as plot points along the way.
Third, the lovely Caribbean setting and Wise’s intriguing and mysterious sailing partner add some island spice and make the tale stand out from more prosaic noir novels. I think this book is another one that rewards re-reading.
Jordan Wise is a mild-mannered accountant with a large San Francisco engineering firm in the late 1970s. By his own admission, the first thirty-four years of his life were dull, empty. But that all changes when he meets and falls in love with Annalise Bonner, an ambitious young woman who craves excitement, a life on the edge.
With her as the catalyst, Wise concocts and executes a meticulous plan to steal more than half a million dollars from his firm. They escape to the Virgin Islands, but their plans to live a life of quiet luxury are beset by unexpected…
Being a musician does funny things to you. It leads you to look for patterns in the beautiful – and not-so-beautiful. To my mind, music is art and logic perfectly combined. I believe this unique combination offers musicians extra insights into the world around us. My desire to discover patterns in the world around me, fused with an underlying sense of injustice, has helped shape the opinions and ideas for a better social model that I write about today. I've founded several online initiatives, written extensively, and given talks around the concept of a post-money, open access economy. I believe this will ultimately prove to be the only viable path for humanity over the next century.
As someone who campaigns for a better way to operate spaceship Earth, Dispelling Wetiko was the precise slap in the face I needed to break free from the spell that has captured so many would-be change-makers like myself. It’s so easy to look around and point the finger at those who benefit most from the world’s problems as being the cause agents when nothing could be further from the truth.
It is our collective hopes, our weaknesses, and our fears – multiplied in their billions – that create the super-structure that billionaires enjoy. Levy defines this as a collective psychosis of humanity that wreaks havoc on the world around us – a psychosis that we must face down before we can hope to defeat it.
There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called "wetiko"—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.
Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized…
I am first and foremost an avid reader of a variety of genres, but women’s/romantic fiction is my favorite. I have a passion for God and His ability to pull us out of the deepest pit and transform a life of beauty from the ashes of our past. Although I write from a “Christian” viewpoint, I prefer characters with flaws and books that deal with women’s issues in a realistic way, not glossed over or hinted at. Which is why my tagline is “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ In my opinion, the harder our characters fall from grace, the more powerful their redemption or testimony will be.
Best-selling author Karen Kingsbury brings to light the ugliness of child prostitution but in a contemporary setting. Experts say reading fiction, especially those books that deal with darker subjects, can boost your mental health. Kingsbury’s portrayal of her main character and the trials she goes through in order to heal from childhood trauma is one such book.
With hallmark tenderness and power, #1 New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury weaves a tapestry of life, loss, love, faith—and the miracle of resurrection.
Mary Madison is educated and redeemed, a powerful voice in Washington, D.C. But she also has a past that shamed polite society. A survivor of unspeakable horror, Mary has battled paralyzing fear, faithlessness, addiction, and promiscuity. Yet even in her darkest valley, Mary was sustained from afar, prayed over by a grandmother who clung to the belief that God had special plans for Mary. Now a divine power has set Mary…
As an author of a dual-timeline thriller series set in Venice in the present-day and 16th century, I’ve spent countless hours researching the world’s most mesmerizing city. I’ve been there three times, including on a research trip. I’ve worked with historians and experts on various aspects and have explored the ancient streets and buildings first-hand. I’ve also read dozens of books set in Venice.
There are so many amazing books set in Venice, but no list is complete without Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. It’s a literary classic from 1912 that not only stands the test of time, it exceeds the hype.Death in Venice follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author who travels to Venice in search of inspiration. Instead, he finds obsession. Death in Venice is erotic and dark, but what I love most about this book is how it captures the city’s bewitching personality.
One of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, the novella "Death in Venice" embodies themes that preoccupied Thomas Mann (1875–1955) in much of his work; the duality of art and life, the presence of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, the connection between love and suffering, and the conflict between the artist and his inner self. Mann's handling of these concerns in this story of a middle-aged German writer, torn by his passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, resulted in a work of great psychological intensity and tragic power. It is…
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