Fans pick 100 books like The Sackett Brand

Drake served in an armor unit in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, so it’s no coincidence that Hammer’s Slammers, a collection of short stories, revolves around a tank unit. So many military SFF stories focus on knuckle-dragging ground-pounders, so it’s refreshing to see war from a tank turret. Drake has been accused of writing gun porn, but I find a lot of nuance in his writing, especially on combat motivation and small-unit leadership. He was one of the first military SFF authors to write an openly gay character, and women fight right alongside men without the misogynistic or objectifying undertones that sometimes afflict the subgenre. To get a sense for Drake’s writing, “But Loyal to His Own” and “Caught in the Crossfire” are two of my favorite stories.

I first read this book not because of interest—in fact, I hadn’t read anything else by its author, Robert Ludlum. Instead, I read this novel because I had been told that my writing was like that of Ludlum’s.

And that is startlingly true. It was as if reading something I had forgotten having written but which was richer with a depth of ever-increasing emotional nuances than works of a comparable kind. It’s a compelling read.

Through a combination of unusual story elements and narrative style, this novel engages a reader in the main character’s journey to discover his forgotten identity. Although this isn’t an all-that-unusual aspect of story-telling, the espionage element makes it a singular literary experience. Over the course of the novel, I progressively felt as if I were spending time with a really awesome friend. And this is owed to, I think, the “slow burn” of empathy compelled… show more.

Drawing on Fleming's experiences in Jamaica, MI6 intelligence officer Bond, James Bond, not only outwits the villain's attempt to turn him into shark and barracuda bait but also deploys a limpet mine to good effect in order to save himself and his female companion from death by coral reef dragging, a device I pay homage to in a later novel.

Fleming's Bond novels introduced the world to a clever hero required to take direct responsibility for stopping great evil. Bond doesn't shy away from brute force when required, but prefers more elegant solutions, inspiring later writers.

Like millions of others, the popular movies introduced his work to me, but Fleming was the early master of the art of an espionage/action thriller novel, inspiring many who followed.

This book is the book that made me decide to become an author. I was always a voracious reader and crazy about all things technological—space exploration, airplanes, naval warfare, you name it. In my mind, there was no way anyone would want to read a book about my interests—until Tom Clancy showed it absolutely could be done and singlehandedly created a new genre of fiction with one book.

His research was so accurate that he was accused of spilling classified information about our submarine capabilities and tactics. But no, he was just an insurance agent from Owings, Maryland, who touched a 220-volt wire in my soul that made me decide, “Someday I’m going to do that, too!”

My favorite novel from one of my favorite historical fiction writers. Louis L’Amour is best known for his many western novels, but his earlier Sackett tales harken back to the days when Europeans were first settling the edge of the great North American continent. No one writes swashbuckling, daring-do adventure stories better than L’Amour, but what makes this book really stand out is his hero, Jubal Sackett. Jubal, the youngest son of the adventurer Barnabas Sackett, has his father’s wanderlust and yearns to see new lands that lie to the west of his home in the mountains of North Carolina. 

He sets out alone, is befriended by Keotah, a Kickapoo warrior, and together they cross the Mississippi and venture out onto the great grass prairie the Natchez tribe calls “the far-seeing land.” Jubal’s a bit of a mystic, but it’s his competence, courage, and integrity that keeps him alive in… show more.

This book is such a classic Western plot.

A confederate soldier, Paul Cable, returns from the Civil War to find Union men have taken over his farm. Cable thinks his fighting is over, but he couldn’t be more wrong.

The book is tense and moves quickly. It’s also short, yet packs a punch far above its weight. Highly recommend.

We take our sunsets seriously in Arizona, enough that we put a variation of one on our state flag. But Bruce Berger's book made me rethink how I look at the smeared colors in the evening sky.

Look not west, he says, but to the mountains in the east: the “decreasing wavelengths and cooling colors–vermillion to salmon to plum” on the slopes that provide a lightbox to the garish display at your back.

This is only the start. In finely wrought prose befitting the author’s other career as a pianist, he renders the harsh beauty of the Southwest in a set of twenty essays that draw a portrait of landscape and memory.

Although this book is about the influential women of Arizona exclusively, they stand in for the many women who have made contributions to the history and culture of the entire West. Cleere begins with indigenous women, and moves on to both historic and modern women in medicine, the arts, business, education, and the law. The short biographies of the nearly forty women profiled here are just enough to whet the appetite for more, and are written in an engaging and accessible style.

If I could return to any place and time in history, it would be to the American West in the years between 1830 to 1880. It was an exciting time of exploration, territorial acquisitions, invention, and discovery of all of the major mineral deposits (Comstock Lode 1859, Butte 1864, Mother Lode 1849), construction of a transcontinental railroad (completed 1869), and establishment of the world’s first national park, Yellowstone (1872). This book opened my eyes to the American West.

In Westward Expansion, Ray Allen Billington takes up the story of the American West where Morison left off. This is a sweeping narrative with Billington acting as a travel guide across the successively moving frontiers beyond the Atlantic Coast. He leads us to the crest of the Appalachians, and then over Ohio and down to Tennessee toward the Mississippi. Next, we race to the Pacific and then come back over the Rockies before finally heading onto the Great Plains west of the Mississippi. Yet Westward Expansion is more than a travelogue. In its pages, we travel with everyone who ever lived on these many frontiers: farmers, workers, soldiers, Indians, immigrants, townspeople. The list goes on and on. It’s America’s story with every triumph and tragedy bound up in constant motion.