90 books like The SOOF

By Samuel G. Tooma,

Here are 90 books that The SOOF fans have personally recommended if you like The SOOF. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Chilly Winds

Geza Tatrallyay Author Of Arctic Meltdown

From my list on climate change thrillers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.

Geza's book list on climate change thrillers

Geza Tatrallyay Why did Geza love this book?

As with the previous book, this one too shows the author’s deep knowledge of the subject and his ability to weave that into a gripping thriller. Here too, you get both learning and titillation. In this book, Brooks Yeager, a former advisor to the Arctic Council and environmental negotiator, combines the high-stakes dynamics of international Arctic politics and many of the critical environmental issues facing us there and elsewhere, with other key ingredients such as well-constructed characters, lots of romance and an engaging plot to create a book you cannot put down.

By Brooks B. Yeager,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Chilly Winds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

2021 American Fiction Award Winner in Adventure: General

Taz Blackwell, former environmental negotiator and now a trouble-seeking drinker and romantic charmer, tries to find a new life and love against a backdrop of espionage, corporate plunderers, and devious diplomats.

Escaping a failed marriage, Taz moves to the island of Chincoteague on Virginia's Atlantic Coast, where he explores friendships with a cast of small-town misfits and romance with a beautiful but wary divorcee. Meanwhile, he fights a corporate land grab on the shore and a shady billion-dollar mining play in the international Arctic.

Why is a Chinese mining conglomerate stealing the…


Book cover of Tipping Point

Geza Tatrallyay Author Of Arctic Meltdown

From my list on climate change thrillers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.

Geza's book list on climate change thrillers

Geza Tatrallyay Why did Geza love this book?

As with most of the other thrillers among the five on my list, this one too—like Rosser’s other novels in the genre—combines solid research and scientific knowledge with gripping international intrigue. Robert Spire, an environmental lawyer, and British GLENCOM (Global Environmental Command) agent is hired to look into the mysterious deaths of two climatologists. Tracked by a sexy Russian spy, he gets enmeshed in uncovering an international conspiracy to melt the Arctic polar ice cap and bring the world to environmental disaster.

By Simon Rosser,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tipping Point as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ecological disaster looms in the Arctic. An eminent climatologist drops dead in his London apartment. Appointed executor and lawyer, Robert Spire is about to have his life turned upside down... Having relocated from London to Wales to run his own law firm, Spire is contacted by Doris Stanton, mother of the late UK climatologist Dr. Dale Stanton, with a request that he finds a suitable home for her dead son's legacy - a large sum left to global warming organisations. Spire sets out to investigate, but soon realises his life is in danger as he uncovers a conspiracy with far…


Book cover of Climate Change, Incorporated: A New Environmental Thriller

Geza Tatrallyay Author Of Arctic Meltdown

From my list on climate change thrillers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.

Geza's book list on climate change thrillers

Geza Tatrallyay Why did Geza love this book?

This underrated novel is interesting because it extrapolates the story of climate change to a new level, where mankind believes it has developed a technological solution to the problem, but the question becomes how real a solution is this? It brings into focus whether the technical solutions our scientists may come up with to control the weather and reverse climate change, will indeed work or not. Petra Sands joins Climate Change, Incorporated, a multinational that has developed a device to regulate the climate that it positions between the sun and the earth. Initially, everything goes according to plan with this technological solution to the evils of climate change, but then things start to unravel…

By Darcy S. Law,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Climate Change, Incorporated as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Petra Sands takes a job with Climate Change, Incorporated, she assumes it will be low stress, low responsibility - just what she wants after being let go from a stressful job. After all, how hard can it be to give weather reports when the weather has already been planned? Soon she will find herself having the most responsibility of anyone in modern society - if it lasts. As the multi-national company releases a device between the earth and sun to regulate climate, all seems to be running perfectly: global temperatures cool, tornados and hurricanes are un-wound before they can…


Book cover of Drought

Geza Tatrallyay Author Of Arctic Meltdown

From my list on climate change thrillers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.

Geza's book list on climate change thrillers

Geza Tatrallyay Why did Geza love this book?

This book is different in perspective from the other ones on my list, since it focuses on climate change caused drought and the actions individual human beings might have to resort to in the face of the stresses of the environment and a corrupt political world. Yet this is an engaging climate change-related thriller, more at the micro-level. Ex-Marine Martin Makepeace is faced with dire choices as he has to save his loved ones in a world where water has become an impossible scarce resource…

By Graham Masterton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Drought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What would happen if the water ran out?

Ex-Marine Martin Makepeace only learned the truth of the maxim that you don't know what you have until you lose it, the day his wife walked out on him with their two kids. Now, the social worker does his best to take care of those who need it most.

But good deeds mean nothing when the water just . . . disappears. It hasn't rained for months, and now, in the height of summer, the taps run dry. And not, as they first suspect, because of a burst water main. In the…


Book cover of Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle

Karen Gershowitz Author Of Wanderlust: Extraordinary People, Quirky Places, and Curious Cuisine

From my list on making you want to travel.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been traveling since age seventeen when I boarded a plane and headed to Europe on my own. Over the next three years I lived in London, took weekend jaunts across the continent, and became completely bitten by the travel bug. Since then, I’ve traveled to more than 95 countries. I’ve lost and gained friends and lovers and made a radical career change so that I could afford my travel addiction. Like my readers, I am an ordinary person. Through travel I’ve learned courage and risk-taking and succeeded at things I didn’t know I could do. My goal in writing is to inspire others to take off and explore the world.

Karen's book list on making you want to travel

Karen Gershowitz Why did Karen love this book?

I think of myself as an adventurous traveler, but Dervla Murphy travels in a way that I would never even consider.

So, it’s a pleasure to sit in a comfortable chair and read about places I’ll never visit and people who I’d love to meet, but never will. Murphy writes so vividly I feel as though I am right beside her as she fends off wolves, struggles to drag a bicycle uphill through mountain snow, and shares tea with nomads.

This was her first book and every book that follows is equally compelling.

By Dervla Murphy,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Full Tilt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Braving hunger, heat exhaustion, unbearable terrain and cultures largely untouched by civilization, Dervla Murphy chronicles her determined trip through nine countries, through snow and ice in the mountains and miles of barren land in the scorching desert. Full Tilt is a highly individual account by a celebrated travel writer based on the daily diary Murphy kept while riding through Yugoslavia, Persia, Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India. Murphy's charm and gracious sensitivity as a writer and a traveler reveals not only civilizations of exotic people and places but the wonder of a woman alone on an extraordinary…


Book cover of Days and Nights in Calcutta

Peggy Payne Author Of Sister India

From my list on sensuous literature of India.

Why am I passionate about this?

About thirty years ago, I spent three months on an Indo-American Fellowship in Varanasi taking notes on daily life in this holy city where my novel Sister India is set. That winter felt like a separate life within my life, a bonus. Because all there was so new to me, and it was unmediated by cars, television, or computers, I felt while I was there so much more in touch with the physical world, what in any given moment I could see, hear, smell…. It was the way I had felt as a child, knowing close-up particular trees and shrubs, the pattern of cracks in a sidewalk.

Peggy's book list on sensuous literature of India

Peggy Payne Why did Peggy love this book?

Days and Nights in Calcutta is a fascinating dual view of the same time and place by a husband and wife, both highly esteemed writers. The couple has returned to her family home in the famously complex and crowded Indian city and this is the account-in-two-voices of their year there. His feels full of wonder and surprise; it has a sunlit quality. Hers feels full of intensity and concern; it is tightly wrought. The book shows me not just India, a place I love to see and feel, but the importance of everyone’s story and view.

By Clark Blaise, Bharati Mukherjee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Days and Nights in Calcutta as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Book by Blaise, Clark, Mukherjee, Bharati


Book cover of 1971: A People's History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India

Sayeed Ferdous Author Of Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh

From my list on South Asian history and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I teach anthropology but find my niche in the blurred zone of history and anthropology. My research interests include South Asian Studies; Historiography; Memory/Forgetting, and Postcolonial Nation, State, and Nationalism. My book Partition as Border-Making draws upon ethnographic details, using oral historical accounts from the Bengal borderland and archival materials. Focusing upon the significance of the mundane in history and its presentness, this research contributes to understanding postcolonial South Asia beyond “indocentrism.” At present, I am co-editing a Bangladesh Reader. In 2021, I jointly conducted a research project on the Partition migrants to Dhaka in partnership with Goethe Institute, Bangladesh.

Sayeed's book list on South Asian history and culture

Sayeed Ferdous Why did Sayeed love this book?

This book is probably among the first ones written by a Pakistani author on the history of the 1971 war, aka Liberation War of Bangladesh, which thrilled me as a reader. It challenges not only the statist-nationalist accounts of Pakistan but those from India and Bangladesh as well.

Anam, the author, accomplished commendable work by talking to people across the cartographies and bringing up diverse and contradictory perspectives about the pretexts and events of 1971-related politics. While after all these years, both the state and society of Pakistan and Bangladesh remained taboo to each other, such a venture appears to be the silver lining of knowledge sharing between the entities in the two territories.

Unsettling for the conformists, nationalists, and statists, this piece of work is a must-read for everyone interested in the region.

By Anam Zakaria,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 1971 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people's homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, its liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too, 1971 marks a watershed moment, its memories sitting uncomfortably in public imagination. It is remembered as the 'Fall of Dacca', the dismemberment of Pakistan or the third Indo-Pak war. In India, 1971 represents something else-the story of humanitarian intervention, of triumph and valour that paved the way for India's rise as a…


Book cover of Tomb of Sand

Cyril Wong Author Of This Side of Heaven

From my list on tackling surrealism, memory, and desire.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mortality, desire, memory, and time are my favourite themes, not just in my writing but in my life. I also love anything—music, art, literature—that is evocative, bizarre, and surreal. As a meditator, lover, and writer of poetry and poetic prose, I love books that expand our minds and hearts in ways that conventional acts of writing and creative expressions fail to do.

Cyril's book list on tackling surrealism, memory, and desire

Cyril Wong Why did Cyril love this book?

Set in India, the central story traces the transformation of 80-year-old Ma, who is depressed after the death of her husband. Suddenly she decides to travel to Pakistan, confronting past traumas connected to the Partition riots. She is accompanied by Rosie, a hijra who is her best and wisest friend. The book is not just about its protagonists, but full of divertissements that tackle the meaning of relationships, memory, and time. There are also talking crows and a sequence of “performance art” when writers of the Partition take the page-as-stage.

By Geetanjali Shree, Daisy Rockwell (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Tomb of Sand as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

A playful, feminist, and utterly original epic set in contemporary northern India, about a family and the inimitable octogenarian matriarch at its heart.

“A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are. This particular tale has a border and women who come and go as they please. Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself . . .”

Eighty-year-old Ma slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Despite her family’s cajoling, she refuses to leave her bed. Her…


Book cover of Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind

Shenaaz Nanji Author Of Child of Dandelions

From my list on stories every teen must read before they turn 18.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer with multiple cultures and heritage. I believe stories are magical, they touch our hearts and change the way we think and behave. Having lived in different continents around the world, my book list reflects stories with diversity of cultures and story settings around the world, and how the impact of these stories reverberated with me for a long time after reading them.

Shenaaz's book list on stories every teen must read before they turn 18

Shenaaz Nanji Why did Shenaaz love this book?

The story is set in the Cholistan Desert in Pakistan near the border between Pakistan and India. I so admired the young 11-year-old girl Shabanu, who is strong-willed, independent, and ‘wild as the wind.’ It tore my heart to read about the tragic encounter with a wealthy landowner that ruined Shabunu’s older sister’s plan of marriage and when Shabanu was called upon to sacrifice all her dreams. A girl in a Muslim family always obeys her father’s wishes so when Shabanu is betrothed to an older man, I was anxious to find out if she would honor her family and heritage or follow her heart and flee.

By Suzanne Fisher Staples,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shabanu as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

The Newbery Honor winner about a heroic Pakistani girl that The Boston Globe called “Remarkable . . . a riveting tour de force.” 

Life is both sweet and cruel to strong-willed young Shabanu, whose home is the windswept Cholistan Desert of Pakistan. The second daughter in a family with no sons, she’s been allowed freedoms forbidden to most Muslim girls. But when a tragic encounter with a wealthy and powerful landowner ruins the marriage plans of her older sister, Shabanu is called upon to sacrifice everything she’s dreamed of. Should she do what is necessary to uphold her family’s honor—or…


Book cover of Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China

Susan K. Harris Author Of Mark Twain, the World, and Me: Following the Equator, Then and Now

From my list on blending memoir, travel, and history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always enjoyed books that introduce me to faraway places, cultural narratives, and the writers behind the stories. After retiring from college teaching, I decided to write one myself. I’m a Mark Twain scholar, so I followed Twain’s lecture tour through Australasia, India, and South Africa. One of my goals was to expose my research methods to my readers, and writing in the first person made that easy. What I hadn’t foreseen was how much the process would force me to confront my own past—exposing the radical differences between Mark Twain and Me. 

Susan's book list on blending memoir, travel, and history

Susan K. Harris Why did Susan love this book?

This is a first book, covering Aiyar’s years in China as a political correspondent for the Indian Express and The Hindu. Because she is Indian, Aiyar’s perspective differs from Americans’ viewpoints, which drew me, as I’ve been to both India and China. Aiyar tracks the impact of rapid growth on her informants’ sense of self and place—and then compares China’s growth to India’s. It’s a fast-paced, lively book featuring lots of interaction between Aiyar and her students, their families, and other informantsa thoughtful portrait of a culture shifting from tradition into an unknowable future, written by a journalist constantly aware of the radical differences between Indian and “new Chinese” values and sensibilities.  

By Pallavi Aiyar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Smoke and Mirrors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


India and China share a 3500-km border and have interacted with each other for over 2000 years. It is remarkable then that their people know so little of each other: what they think, how they live, their language, customs and philosophy.Or even their cuisine. Pallavi Aiyar was very much the average Indian in her knowledge of China when she set out for Beijing in 2002. Over the next five years, she became a fascinated observer of a country undergoing relentless change. This book is an intimate look at a society evolving at double-digit pace. In the process, Pallavi Aiyar breaks…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Pakistan, India, and submarines?

Pakistan 46 books
India 473 books
Submarines 34 books