Here are 90 books that The Rifle fans have personally recommended if you like
The Rifle.
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I am a longtime Los Angeles trial lawyer, as well as a writer and librettist. I graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz and from the Santa Clara University School of Law where I was a member of the Law Review. Me and my wife, Susan, are the parents of six children and live in Santa Monica, California. My previous novel, The Logic Bomb, a legal thriller, was published in 2015.
Scott Turow, author of numerous legal thrillers, turns his hand to historical fiction Ordinary Heroes, which manages to combine action and suspense with the touching personal journey of a journalist looking for the truth about his father and what he did during and after World War II.
The father, a JAG lawyer, is on the hunt for a rogue OSS agent and on the way, falls in love, finds himself in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge, and uncovers the horrors of a concentration camp.
Far removed from his usual Kindle County milieu – Turow, often unjustly pigeonholed as a genre writer – turns in some of his best writing. Its ending left me in tears.
As a post-script, I was so moved by the book that I did something I almost never do – I emailed Turow a fan letter. I got a call from his…
From the bestselling author of Presumed Innocent comes Ordinary Heroes, Scott Turow's Second World War story of family and bravery.
All parents keep secrets from their children. My father, it seemed, kept more than most . . .
Whilst mourning the death of his father, journalist Stewart Dubin decides to research the life of a man he had always respected, always admired, but possibly never quite knew . . .
As a young, idealistic lawyer during the last terrible months of the Second World War, David Dubin was sent to the European Front - ostensibly to bring charges against a…
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
This book has it all: humor, sparkling writing, a great cast of characters, and a fascinating dose of history (World War II history). In the book, we meet Archie and his spunky great-aunts, who are both in their 90s and enlisted in British women's service groups to help their country defeat the Germans.
As the story unfolds, weaving back and forth between the 1940s and the present, we learn both women harbor secrets from their war years, and those secrets unfold over time, climaxing in a gripping ending during which Archie and his great-aunts are held hostage by terrorists during a jewelry auction in Paris. I couldn’t put this book down!
"Irresistible...Filled with surprise, poignancy, and excitement, this is a surefire winner." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A brilliant and witty drama about two brave female World War II veterans who survived the unthinkable without ever losing their killer instinct…or their joie de vivre.
Meet the Williamson sisters, Britain’s most treasured World War II veterans. Now in their late nineties, Josephine and Penny are in huge demand, popping up at commemorative events and history festivals all over the country. Despite their age, they’re still in great form—perfectly put together, sprightly and sparky, and always in search of their next “excitement.”
Walter R. Borneman is an American military and political historian. He won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize in Naval Literature for The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King, a national bestseller. Borneman's other titles include Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona; MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific; and 1812: The War That Forged a Nation.
All of Hornfischer’s histories deserve to be on this list, but Neptune’s Inferno is my personal favorite. Guadalcanal is justifiably thought of as the heroic struggle of Marines to take and hold the island, but they could not have done so without the sacrifices of thousands of sailors in the surrounding waters.
Hornfischer’s smooth style guides one through multiple battles over a four-month campaign, including two of the darkest moments in U.S. naval history: the fiery nighttime battle of Savo Island that initially saved the beachhead and the opening round of the climatic battles of mid-November 1942 that numbered two admirals among the American dead.
"A masterpiece of 20th-century naval history." --Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of The Immaculate Invasion
"The star of this year's reading list is James D. Hornfischer, a military historian whose flair for narrative is rivaled only by his ability to organize the sweep of battle and assess strategy and tactics in layman's terms." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Battle of Guadalcanal has long been heralded as a Marine victory. Now, with his powerful portrait of the Navy's sacrifice, James D. Hornfischer tells for the first time the full story of the men who fought in destroyers, cruisers, and battleships in…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
In May 1968, I arrived at my first duty station as a new B-52 navigator-bombardier. Later, at the bar, I was hailed by a booming voice from behind the beer taps. "Hi ya, lieutenant!" Moments later, he asked what I thought of the USAF so far. I said I was career-minded. ‘‘Hell, only the pilots get promoted; navigators get diddley-squat. Get out as soon as you can.” After he departed, the bartender came over. “Know who that was, lieutenant? He’s Tom Ferebee, the man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima." The colonel had both underscored my dismal career prospects and instilled a lifelong passion for the subjects discussed in this book.
A meticulously compiled coffee-table ‘yearbook’ of the 509th Composite Group, including over 850 photos of people, places, and planes, along with 346 pages of text. A sometimes hard-to-come-by collector’s volume that is always pricey, it is nevertheless worth every penny. One will discover information nuggets here that cannot be found anywhere else. A must-book for anyone interested in the 509th CG. As told by the veterans who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.
A Complete History Of the 509th Composite Group the WWII Army Aircorps Unit that dropped the Atomic Bombs on Japan. From their formation In 1944 to their return home to the United States in December 1945. The Book contains over 125 personal stories from veterans of the unit as well as over 800 Illustrations and 8 page color section with pictures of the Nose Art of the B-29s.Photos of all crews, all missions and the history of each plane Is detailed In the book, as well as a complete roster of all men In the unit
Long ago I lived in a world of blackouts and food rationing and German planes threatening overhead, children dying in epidemics of polio and TB, and food on the dinner table not always certain. In that world, homosexuality was a criminal and psychiatric term and queer men were objects of ridicule, tragic sissies it was normal to mock as sick monsters who could go to jail for their forbidden behavior. I’ve listed some of the books that trace part of the long journey queer men took until it felt reasonably safe to discuss queerness nonjudgmentally. Question: In how many American schools, even today, would a teacher be banned from assigning one of these books?
Written in the fifties, perhaps the author’s gender helped excuse her brave assumption that the intimate thoughts and feelings of a group of young gay men attempting to come to terms with their sexual identity was a valid topic. Renaud writes of stunted lives: the invented girlfriends, the cautious hints to probe another man’s preferences, the desperate need to belong, provoking the retreat into society’s stereotyping even amongst themselves. The novel is dated; one character has to explain to another what drag is! But it was one more step towards gay men’s forming their identity and self-acceptance.
Injured at Dunkirk, Laurie Odell, a young corporal, is recovering at a rural veterans' hospital. There he meets Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly, and the men find solace in their covert friendship. Then Ralph Lanyon appears, a mentor from Laurie's schooldays. Through him, Laurie is drawn into a tight-knit circle of gay men for whom liaisons are fleeting and he is forced to choose between the ideals of a perfect friendship and the pleasures of experience. First published in 1953, The Charioteer is a a tender, intelligent coming-of-age novel and a bold, unapologetic portrayal of homosexuality that…
I’m an author, reader, and cinephile with a real appetite for all things crime. If it’s a mystery, if it’s a detective story, if there are questionable morals at play in a story with no easy answers and no clear way out, then count me in. I’m also fascinated by the WWII era and was spellbound by the stories my maternal grandfather told me about his time as an infantry soldier in Italy during the war. These passions moved me to write my own novels and continue to inspire me in my embrace of art. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I do!
Robin Robertson’s noir narrativeThe Long Take might seem like an unusual choice for this list.
Essentially a long noir poem,The Long Takeconcerns Walker, a Canadian veteran of D-Day with acute PTSD who finds life unraveling in the urban landscapes he inhabits after the war.
With a poet’s precision, Robertson follows Walker as he moves from city to city, taking it all in. Homelessness, crime, race—nothing is spared.
Why, you’d think you were in a 40s film noir, reading about it all, and then you find Walker on the streets of LA in 1948 seeing some of those very films being shot, films likeAct of Violenceand Criss Cross.
An outstanding achievement, The Long Take is a wholly original work of art.
Winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
'A beautiful, vigorous and achingly melancholy hymn to the common man that is as unexpected as it is daring.' --John Banville, Guardian
A noir narrative written with the intensity and power of poetry, The Long Take is one of the most remarkable - and unclassifiable - books of recent years.
Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can't return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead…
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…
I love historical fiction because it’s the next best thing to the invention of time travel. Books can immerse you in a time and a place in a way that comics and movies can only gesture at. For books likeNever SleepI even make sure to cook the foods my characters are eating, to make sure the era is evoked for the readers in all five sense.I love fantasy and science fiction as the next person, but the idea of transporting people to times and placesthat actually happened, to the best of my skill as a dramatist and researcher, is a challenge I find irresistible as an author.
A direct inspiration on my book, this is a great espionage thriller set in Philadelphia about a disgraced Revolution-era spy who gets hired by Alexander Hamilton to help against his arch-enemy, Thomas Jefferson, and finds his path intersecting with a farmwife standing up against a frontier uprising.
Liss is a master of the historical form (and a friend, full disclosure!)
America, 1787. Ethan Saunders, once among General Washington’s most valued spies, is living in disgrace after an accusation of treason cost him his reputation. But an opportunity for redemption comes calling when Saunders’s old enemy, Alexander Hamilton, draws him into a struggle with bitter rival Thomas Jefferson over the creation of the Bank of the United States.
Meanwhile, on the western Pennsylvania frontier, Joan Maycott and her husband, a Revolutionary War veteran, hope for a better life and a chance for prosperity. But the Maycotts’ success on an isolated frontier attracts the brutal attention of men who threaten to destroy…
I was a military spouse for 26 years. My husband was stationed at MCAS Cherry Point NC and MCB Camp Lejeune NC, both for two years. We (he and I and our four children) lived on the base. He also served two tours in Vietnam, just like Doreen’s husband, and also at Headquarters, Marine Corps later. The fictional Marine base and town where this takes place is modeled after Camp Lejeune and the adjacent town. I did see the same sign welcoming us to Klan country, on Easter Sunday morning 1972 and have never forgotten it. I also knew Queenie’s counterpart. This novel is in no way autobiographical—I was never as brave as Doreen.
Mudbound is about post-WWII in the Jim Crow south. It tells the stories of two returning soldiers in a muddy farm setting. I was raised on a dairy farm with plenty of mud, so I easily identified with the setting. The situation of the two men, one White, one Black, and their families' struggles, physically with the constant mud, and emotionally with the politics of both the era and the place, were graphic. It was a book that was difficult to put down and also difficult to read. In ways I was reminded of 12 Years A Slave.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CAREY MULLIGAN, GARRETT HEDLUND & MARY J. BLIGE
When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Henry's love of rural life is not shared by Laura, who struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud.
Until today’s multiple catastrophes, the Vietnam War was the most harrowing moment in the lives of my fellow baby boomers and me. Drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1970, I spent 365 days in Vietnam as a combat correspondent. That experience changed my life, because as the Argentinian writer Jose Narosky has pointed out, “in war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” I have spent the past five decades trying to heal those wounds, writing three books grounded in my Vietnam experience, and have devoted my life to listening to the voices of our veterans, distilling their memories (often music-based), and sharing their words.
Vea’s novel is as ambitious, complex, and surreal a story about the horrors of Vietnam (and post-Vietnam) ever written. A Vietnam vet himself, Vea traces the efforts of several men and women who try to purge their Vietnam ghosts while finding a way to curtail the violence convulsing contemporary America. Jesse Pasadoble, the protagonist, is a defense attorney in San Francisco, hardened and embittered by his Vietnam experience. While his journey toward redemption, as well as that of an Army chaplain who goes AWOL in Vietnam, may require a “willing suspension of disbelief,” Vea skillfully pulls it off, helped in no small way by the many allusions to jazz, specifically the inimitable works of John Coltrane and Charles Mingus.
For Vietnam veteran Jesse Pasadoble, now a defense attorney living in San Francisco, the battle still rages: in his memories, in the gang wars erupting on Potrero Hill, and in the recent slaying of two women: one black, one Vietnamese. While seeking justice for the young man accused of this brutal double murder, Jesse must walk with the ghosts of men who died on another hill... men who were his comrades and friends in a war that crossed racial divides.
Gods Go Begging is a new classic of Latino literature, a literary detective…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
I love to read. I always have. I also love to write mysteries that, hopefully, keep my reader guessing until the end of the book. I look for books that not only provide me with a mystery to solve but also inform me of situations and/or places I would otherwise never learn about. I have found all the books on my list to fill that need. They are just an example of the many I have found and read.
I found this book suspenseful and couldn’t put it down. I was kept on the edge of my seat as to the fate of the characters until the end.
The fact that one of the characters was a Vietnam veteran and it affected his life interested me. I also found the setting of Alaska in the 1970s interesting and informative.
In Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, a desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.
#1 New York Times Instant Bestseller (February 2018) A People “Book of the Week” Buzzfeed’s “Most Anticipated Women’s Fiction Reads of 2018” Seattle Times’s “Books to Look Forward to in 2018”
Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter…
