Here are 55 books that Michael Osbourne fans have personally recommended once you finish the Michael Osbourne series.
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I’m a reader and writer of thrillers, especially espionage, but I also love literary fiction, including contemporary writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, Mohsin Hamid, and Amor Towles. And I enjoy reading classic writers including Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka. So, when it comes to reading thrillers, I gravitate towards those that are very well written, with precise prose and evocative imagery. This is my crossover list of the best five spy thrillers for readers of literary fiction. If you’re a literary reader interested in dabbling in a bit of espionage, these five books would be a great place to start.
Silva’s novels about Gabriel Allon—a reluctant Israeli secret agent posing as an Italian art restorer—are my current favorite read and a serious contender for the best spy thrillers by a contemporary writer.
Each of the novels in the series works as a separate episode; in this case, Allon is lured into action to track down a Palestinian assassin.
But Allon is brought to life by recurring themes across the series, including the fact that his traumatized wife is permanently assigned to a psychiatric hospital by the car bomb that killed their son.
Silva’s meticulous writing and ingenious mixing of historical fact and fiction will appeal to literary readers.
Wily old Israeli intelligence chief recalls former agents in order to eliminate top Palestinian terrorist. One agent is now an art restorer, the other a fashion model. Ten years before on a mission to destroy the Arab Black September group they were briefly lovers. Now their pasts and their enemies come back to haunt them, as the terrorist murders ambassadors in Paris and Holland. Will the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks be his next target? And what motivates the terrorist? Is it politics, or is it possibly personal? Set mainly in London, but with forays into Paris, Amsterdam, the Middle East and…
I guess my real interest in writing about the good and bad in crime and politics and the good and bad characters involved started with my first job as a junior in a local newspaper. The 60s was a time of great change. I was in the right place at the right time and got involved in reporting local government politics. I graduated later to cover Britain’s role within the EU in Brussels. I was fascinated, not so much by the politics but by the politicians and fellow news reporters involved. They inspired the creation of my fictional character, Pete West, a hardboiled political columnist.
Read as a teenager, this book hooked me into mystery thrillers. It has everything from murder to political intrigue to a spy ring.
The book is a chase thriller with twists, turns, and surprises. Written in 1930, the work had the feel of a ‘boy's own’ adventure story with a man on the run hunting German spies and clues leading to the 39 steps and victory.
Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.
I lived vicariously through Nancy Drew when I was young. I was naturally observant and curious, and my mom was known to tail a car through our neighborhood if she thought the driver looked suspicious. So, it’s not surprising that I developed a love for all things thrilling. While working in the oil and gas industry for fifteen years, I spent some time focused on a foreign deal that served as inspiration for my first novel. I worked with people seeking power; negotiations bordered on nefarious; the workplace became toxic. If you ever ponder the moral implications behind the pursuit of power, you’ll enjoy the books on this list!
I tell everyone I know that if they want a book with incredible character development, read The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.
This book is highly atmospheric. You can feel the biting cold, the fear, the pain. It also has characters with questionable ethics. It made me question how I feel about vengeance and retribution. Some of the content is very dark, yet it doesn’t feel sensationalized.
This is also a thriller with hints of a happy ending—at least, for some people—while also leaving some things uncertain or unresolved. I prefer a thriller to leave me hanging a little . . .
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly-knit but dysfunctional family.
He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history.
Why do I love Vatican Intrigue? Well, here’s just one example. When the cardinal electors vote for a new pope, they process through a locked Sistine Chapel toward Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment and drop their twice folded paper ballots into a large golden chalice, a process that hasn’t changed for centuries. The faster the world turns and evolves, the more I am drawn to the Vatican’s many ancient traditions and protocols. And, the funny part is, I am not a particularly conservative person; it’s just that I appreciate the Vatican as a huge counterweight to the rapid changes taking place in the rest of the world.
If you are one of those people (you know, the sort that read The DaVinci Code but didn’t read any of Dan Brown’s other—much better—books) stop what you are doing and upload Angels & Demons into your Nook or Kindle right now.
Dan Brown has his shortcomings, yes, but nobody does Vatican Intrigue better. Nobody. And his plotting and background research are truly exceptional. Read it.
CERN Institute, Switzerland: a world-renowned scientist is found brutally murdered with a mysterious symbol seared onto his chest.
The Vatican, Rome: the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Somewhere beneath them, an unstoppable bomb of terrifying power relentlessly counts down to oblivion.
In a breathtaking race against time, Harvard professor Robert Langdon must decipher a labyrinthine trail of ancient symbols if he is to defeat those responsible - the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood presumed extinct for nearly four hundred years, reborn to continue their deadly vendetta against their most hated enemy, the Catholic Church.
I’ve always loved mysteries and the detectives that solved them. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot were heroes to me, but as I grew older and the world grew more complex, I started reading novels where it was not so easy to separate the good guys from the bad. The world was not black and white anymore, and justice was not so simple. Characters who had to work around the law or took matters into their own hands to earn justice became my new heroes. Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade, while not saints themselves, did whatever they had to in order to serve justice, and I admired them for it.
This book simply knocked me out when I first read it, mostly because the characters were so gripping and vivid.
Philip Marlowe was the quintessential hard-boiled private eye working to find justice in a rotten world—a sort of modern-day Don Quixote. I was also enthralled by Chandler’s depiction of a morally bankrupt Los Angeles, full of shysters, criminals, and false messiahs.
I admired the dogged hero’s determination to—despite numerous temptations not to—get at the truth of the matter. Ironically, when justice is served, no one is better off for it.
The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the forthcoming film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson
Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.
I write thrillers full-time these days, but for many years, I was a writer and editor at publications that take reporting and fact-checking seriously. I still strive for accuracy in my novels—which always involve violence. As a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, the mechanics and psychology of close-quarters combat are things I think about daily. This is not to say that you need to rob banks to write a heist scene. And while technical knowledge is helpful, there’s no substitute for close noticing of what happens to our bodies and minds in extreme situations. Here are some books (and one screenplay) which do that incredibly well.
This book taught me that good writers describe the effects of violence, but great writers leave things to the imagination. Early in the novel, retired spymaster George Smiley is summoned to the scene of a murder. The corpse, lying facedown on Hampstead Heath, is one of Smiley’s former spies—shot in the face at very close range. But Le Carré, whose descriptive chops are second to none, never shows us the wound, relying instead on dialogue and reactions to convey the horror.
The constable who rolls the body over instantly throws up. And then there’s this chilling question from a police superintendent: “Did he have a moustache at all, sir? My sergeant fancied a trace of white whisker on the upper jaw.” Less is always more when describing you’re the unspeakable.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.
Tell Max that it concerns the Sandman...
A very junior agent answers Vladimir's call, but it could have been the Chief of the Circus himself. No one at the British Secret Service considers the old spy to be anything except a senile has-been who can't give up the game-until he's shot in the face at point-blank range. Although George Smiley (code name: Max) is officially retired, he's summoned to identify the body now…
I consider myself a disruptor of sorts, both in my life and in the art I make (I’m an actor, too). So I am by nature drawn to novels that bend and reshape (and sometimes ignore altogether) the rules and conventions that are supposed to govern the novelist’s craft and lead me to experience the world—and often the art of writing fiction itself—in ways I have never experienced either before. The novels on my list do just that.
Not exactly literary fiction, I know. And it breaks none of the rules governing the novelist’s craft. And we all read it back when it came out, didn't we? Or saw the movie, there've been a couple of versions...
So why is it on my list, you ask?
The Day of the Jackal is quite simply the greatest thriller ever written, and should be read by anyone who writes fiction, literary or otherwise—and by the rest of us as well.
Think for a moment: We follow The Jackal’s relentless quest to corner and kill French President Charles DeGaulle for 380 pages, waiting with breath bated to see whether he will succeed even though we know before we ever open the cover of the book (if we know even the slightest bit of history) that DeGaulle was never assassinated—ever!—not by The Jackal and not by anyone in…
The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of the struggle to catch a killer before it's too late.
It is 1963 and an anonymous Englishman has been hired by the Operations Chief of the O.A.S. to murder General De Gaulle. A failed attempt in the previous year means the target will be nearly impossible to get to. But this latest plot involves a lethal weapon: an assassin of legendary talent.
Known only as The Jackal, this remorseless and deadly killer must be stopped, but how do you track a man who exists in name alone?
Why do I love Vatican Intrigue? Well, here’s just one example. When the cardinal electors vote for a new pope, they process through a locked Sistine Chapel toward Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment and drop their twice folded paper ballots into a large golden chalice, a process that hasn’t changed for centuries. The faster the world turns and evolves, the more I am drawn to the Vatican’s many ancient traditions and protocols. And, the funny part is, I am not a particularly conservative person; it’s just that I appreciate the Vatican as a huge counterweight to the rapid changes taking place in the rest of the world.
I love to learn interesting things when I read. The Third Secret is loaded with Vatican history and lore.
I am also a sucker for ancient prophecies and closely guarded secrets, and man does The Third Secret have these! Combine this with a very relatable main character and a villain you will love to hate, and you have a page turner that will keep you up at night.
What is the Third Secret? It is rumoured to be a prediction so shocking that it has been locked away for over eighty years. Could this be what is drawing Pope Clement XV to the Vatican archive, night after sleepless night? When Father Colin Michener is sent on a secret mission to the highlands of Romania, he is pitched into a vortex of suspicion, deceit, murder and forbidden passion. Suddenly, he is forced to face the very thing that has so distressed the Pope - and to unravel a mystery that will shake the world.
Why do I love Vatican Intrigue? Well, here’s just one example. When the cardinal electors vote for a new pope, they process through a locked Sistine Chapel toward Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment and drop their twice folded paper ballots into a large golden chalice, a process that hasn’t changed for centuries. The faster the world turns and evolves, the more I am drawn to the Vatican’s many ancient traditions and protocols. And, the funny part is, I am not a particularly conservative person; it’s just that I appreciate the Vatican as a huge counterweight to the rapid changes taking place in the rest of the world.
This book has everything: great characters, interesting history, and a plot that will keep you turning the pages.
But the thing that really impressed me was the details. If you, like me, are big on the little things that give a book true authenticity, you will love The Vivaldi Cipher. And it is just the beginning: with eleven more books in the series, you can get your fill of Vatican intrigue.
During the election of a new Pope in the mid-18th century, famed violinist Antonio Vivaldi learns of a ring of art forgers who are replacing the Vatican's priceless treasures with expertly-painted fakes. Desperate, the composer hides a message in a special melody, hoping someone, someday, will take down the culprits . . .
Nearly three hundred years later, the confession of a dying Mafia Don alerts a Venetian priest to a wealth of forged paintings in the Vatican Museum, and the key to their identities lies hidden in a puzzling piece of music. Father Michael Dominic, prefect of the Secret…
Why do I love Vatican Intrigue? Well, here’s just one example. When the cardinal electors vote for a new pope, they process through a locked Sistine Chapel toward Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment and drop their twice folded paper ballots into a large golden chalice, a process that hasn’t changed for centuries. The faster the world turns and evolves, the more I am drawn to the Vatican’s many ancient traditions and protocols. And, the funny part is, I am not a particularly conservative person; it’s just that I appreciate the Vatican as a huge counterweight to the rapid changes taking place in the rest of the world.
I love Vatican intrigue, and Conclave has it in spades.
The characters, especially the various Cardinals vying to be pope, are the strength of the book. I recommend it highly, even if, as I did, you watched the movie first. And as far as "I didn’t see the end coming" is concerned, Conclave wins that competition hands down.
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY EDWARD BERGER AND STARRING RALPH FIENNES, STANLEY TUCCI, JOHN LITHGOW, AND ISABELLA ROSSELLINI • The page-turning thriller set in the Vatican's secretive halls of power by the best-selling author of Enigma and Fatherland
"Pulsates with intrigue. . . . Ambition, sex scandals, financial corruption and terrorism all rear their ugly heads. And Harris saves one whopper of a surprise for the final pages." —USA Today
The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will gather to cast…
