Here are 91 books that The Thicket fans have personally recommended if you like
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Growing up, my mother often shared stories of her evacuation to a small Wiltshire village during World War Two. Far from a warm welcome, the local children viewed the newcomers with suspicion, and they were made to feel unwanted. My mother did, however, form one lifelong friendship that was very important to her. Her tales inspired me to write a novel about an evacuee’s experience for my Creative Writing MA. Living in Dorset at the time, I set my story there. The research was fascinating, allowing me to weave together historical insights with my own memories and experiences of today’s rural life.
The thought of walking around an occupied town in France during WWII terrifies me. The prospect of running into Nazis, looking for any excuse to arrest me, is the thing of nightmares.
But my fears shrink to nothing compared to the experience of blind sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure attempting to navigate war-torn Saint-Malo from the memory of a handmade tabletop model. The strength of courage she shows in this story has never left me.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION
A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic…
Growing up in Alberta, Canada, I spent many summer days at the Calgary Stampede, where I became familiar with the idea of the Wild West. We would don our cowboy hats and trek to the fairgrounds to watch bucking horses and chuckwagon races. Thus began my obsession with popular westerns. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject, and I still teach courses and write books about various aspects of the popular West. As a bit of an outsider myself, I especially love Westerns by folks on the margins, without a lot of power. Their takes on the West are always quirky and surprising. I hope you agree!
This is a Rubik’s cube of a Western. It feels so familiar in terms of its Western iconography and stock characters and motifs, but McCarthy twists the familiar tropes of the popular Western into bizarre and inscrutable patterns.
It’s a book I want to figure out but can’t quite, and that’s why I have re-read it several times. With each read, I’m confronted with a new puzzle just when I thought I had cracked its code.
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes that Moss and his young wife are in desperate need of protection. One party in the failed transaction hires an ex-Special Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular…
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
This book by John Grisham asks how moral people live in an unjust society. They either come to terms with the wickedness of a broken world or end their lives.
The opening page of the Grisham novel reveals a man who can’t cope with his sins, those of his ancestors, and society. I submit the reader wants a more courageous protagonist capable of coping with the chaos. The entire purpose of crime fiction is to re-establish the order shattered by evil.
In the long-awaited successor to the novel that launched his phenomenal career, John Grisham brings us the powerful sequel to A Time to Kill. As filled with page-turning twists as it is with legal mastery, Sycamore Row proves beyond doubt that John Grisham is in a league of his own.
Jake Brigance has never met Seth Hubbard, or even heard of him, until the old man's suicide note names him attorney for his estate. The will is dynamite. Seth has left ninety per cent of his vast, secret fortune to his housemaid.
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
The king of the cowboy detectives, Walt Longmire, must choose a course for his life after Vietnam. We know our hero devoted his life to serving his neighbors, yet here we confront the moment of stark paths before him. The choice not only represents a personal sacrifice but requires those he loves to sacrifice. The calling to seek justice demands a constant commitment.
Johnson presents a villain who has surrendered to his baser nature. A trope of mystery fiction contrasting with a hero capable of overcoming such self-destructiveness. I listened to the audiobook.
The thirteenth novel in Craig Johnson's beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series, the basis for the hit Netflix series Longmire
Sheriff Walt Longmire is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of…
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
My next pick, by C.J. Book, presents Joe Pickett with the dilemma of facing his failings. He didn’t do enough to save his daughter. Further confounding his guilt is the fact the girl was more of an adopted child. Did self-preservation and the preservation of his family compel him to sell her out, or did he do all he could?
Pickett comes to terms with assisting a fugitive to promote a greater good.
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett heads for the forests of Twelve Sleep County to investigate a massive explosion that may have killed a colorful environmental activist and uncovers evidence of a deadly conspiracy that challenges his courage, survival skills, and ethics. By the author of Open Season. 30,000 first printing.
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
James Lee Burke’s book presents the common trope of the cowboy detective out of time and place. The reader would assume the series-leading Texan would enjoy beautiful Montana; however, the setting is awash in corruption and evil.
The hero navigates this moral morass, revealing the harsh consequences of selfishness for humanity.
America's finest crime writer sends hero Billy Bob Holland deep into Montana - paradise to some, to others a savage wilderness...
'Still the greatest, bar none' LITERARY REVIEW
'Powerful stuff and confirms Burke's place in the forefront of contemporary American crime fiction' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'BITTERROOT is beautifully written and still stands head and shoulders above most other crime fiction' OBSERVER
When Billy Bob Holland visits his old friend Doc Voss, he finds himself caught up in a horrific tragedy. Doc's daughter has been brutally attacked by bikers, and the ringleader, Lamar Ellison, walks free when the DNA samples 'get lost'.…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
I’m of the opinion that good writers draw from life experience. Here are the broad strokes: a Boy Scout reporter at the 1964 national Jamboree, a drummer in country, rock, and jazz bands, a SCUBA instructor, a commercial real estate developer, a drug addict, and an inmate in the penal system. I’ve been reading and writing almost from day one. Most of my early work is crap. I’ve learned the hard way what makes a story worth telling and how best to tell it. Read my recommendations and decide for yourself. After all, it’s your opinion that counts.
I’m a huge fan of realism in fiction, particularly in character-driven tales of the dark side. This book reads like a modern-day chronicle of Earth—gritty realism, cynical truth—only set on the ghetto planet of Lagarto. Is it sci-fi or hardboiled crime noir? Who cares? It is a great read.
The derelict Kop lives and breathes among the pages, vacillating between blind brutality and a deep desire to make a difference. Kop shoulders its way through the crowd of sci-fi neo-noir pretenders. Read it; it’s worth the ride.
Juno is a dirty cop with a difficult past and an uncertain future. When his family and thousands of others emigrated to the colony world of Lagarto, they were promised a bright future on a planet with a booming economy. But before the colonists arrived, everything changed. An opportunistic Earth-based company developed a way to produce a cheaper version of Lagarto's main export, thus effectively impoverishing the planet and all its inhabitants. Growing up on post-boom Lagarto, Juno is but one of the many who live in despair. Once he was a young cop in the police department of the…
I’m of the opinion that good writers draw from life experience. Here are the broad strokes: a Boy Scout reporter at the 1964 national Jamboree, a drummer in country, rock, and jazz bands, a SCUBA instructor, a commercial real estate developer, a drug addict, and an inmate in the penal system. I’ve been reading and writing almost from day one. Most of my early work is crap. I’ve learned the hard way what makes a story worth telling and how best to tell it. Read my recommendations and decide for yourself. After all, it’s your opinion that counts.
I love things that go punch in the dark. This book is another fine example of breaking the mold. Some would label it a “crime novel,” some “noir,” others “thriller,” and others still “hardboiled.” Bottomline, this is one kickass novel.
I had to put down one of King's long-winded tales and a Koontz self-absorbed Oddity because I didn't want to stop reading this book. I'll get back to those guys later. This pick is a fast dirt bike in a sandstorm—way more fun.
Mr. Swierczynski (try to type that 3 times fast) crafts one hell of a novel. His bizarre twists are the stuff of nose bleeds, all done with gritty characters in a fast-paced style that grabs you by the eyeballs and won't let go. He initially reminded me of one of my all-time dark writing faves, Charlie Huston. Unique beyond comparison, The Wheelman checks all the boxes for…
Meet Lennon, a mute Irish getaway driver who has fallen in with the wrong heist team on the wrong day at the wrong bank. Betrayed, his money stolen and his battered carcass left for dead, Lennon is on a one-way mission to find out who is responsible--and to get back his loot. But the robbery has sent a violent ripple effect through the streets of Philadelphia. And now a dirty cop, the Russian and Italian mobs, the mayor's hired gun, and a keyboard player in a college rock band maneuver for position as this adrenaline-fueled novel twists and turns its…
So look, I’m going to admit something: I’ve been casting myself as the heroine in historical adventures and mysteries since the age of six. I’ve been Sherlock Holmes’s daughter, Elizabeth Bennett’s slightly disreputable sleuthing cousin, the lone lady Pinkerton hunting down Butch and Sundance. These youthful fantasies combined three things I adored: puzzles, adventure, and geeking out on history. When I got a little older, I left off imagining myself in the starring role in favour of something even more immersive: becoming someone else entirely. Whether I’m writing them or reading them, books like the ones on this list transport me, and I hope they’ll transport you, too.
“Being a lady is a crashing bore, or hadn’t you noticed?” So observes Veronica Speedwell: lepidopterist, spinster and – much to her chagrin – a lady. But Veronica isn’t going to be bound by that, and she’s as happy chasing murderers as she is butterflies and men. This book is as much about her smoldering relationship with the enigmatic Stoker as it is a whodunnit, which is part of what attracted me to it. I’m a sucker for sexual tension, and this book has it in spades—along with the sort of dry one-liners that will have you snickering into your tea.
After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica Speedwell intends to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry-and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb.But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. The baron offers her sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker-a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can…
I’m a writer who loves to read and wants to write all the fantasy genres, or at least, wants to try. I’ve always been fascinated by monsters and the question, “What if?” Dystopian, Apocalyptic, Post-Apocalyptic, and Fantasy gives us the freedom to explore both these things. It’s amazing how these genres can bend our world and expectation when we explore these two things. What if the world ended but not in the way we expect? What if monsters were real? What if we are the real monsters? These questions are terrifying but so fascinating to consider and blending fantasy with apocalyptic has been a safe way to explore them.
This one is totally different than the others on my list, but when I was diving into these related genres and finding myself more and more inspired by them, it was always a surprise and a treat to find a book that just completely defied all genre expectations. The book blends Sci-Fi with Fantasy, something I’ve always enjoyed if done well, and something that made me think maybe I could try my hand at this. I was never that great in science or math, even though I tried, but the idea that we could mix Sci-Fi with Fantasy, now that was intriguing. And throw in a little unexpected romance and I think you have a really well-rounded adventure. Humans are the root cause of the ending of the human race, so obviously humans have to undo what they’ve done, but your average person is just trying to survive the fallout.
A stunning debut YA novel, destined to blow the dystopian genre wide open - The Handmaid's Tale for a new generation. This edition will contain a sneak preview of Fever, and a brand new short story by Lauren DeStefano: "The First Bride".
Sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery has only four years left to live when she is kidnapped by the Gatherers and forced into a polygamous marriage. Now she has one purpose: to escape, find her twin brother, and go home - before her time runs out forever.
