Here are 100 books that 45 Master Characters fans have personally recommended if you like
45 Master Characters.
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I was introduced to small business when I was six years old—my parents purchased a drug store to run (that drug store, after being sold forty years ago, is still in business). When I started my agency, there were few books on how to start, grow, and stay in business that didn’t tout traditional thinking. I think outside the triangle. I never thought I would be an author, and I am writing book #6! I write books today that I wish were available when I started my business journey: unique strategies coupled with actionable steps to grow. I hope these books provide inspiration and ideas!
I had to add a second book that I refer to often to keep my mind focused on what I have accomplished instead of what I still want to do with my business.
I love this book as it helps me to reframe business growth (and setbacks) in a way to keep my energy and focus going. I also like the summaries in the back that I can refer to when I just want a reminder of technique to get back into the gain.
Dan Sullivan shares his simple yet profound teaching that, until now, has only been known to his Strategic Coach clients: unsuccessful people focus on 'The Gap', but successful people focus on 'The Gain'.
Most people, especially highly ambitious people, are unhappy because of how they measure their progress. We all have an 'ideal', a moving target that is always out of reach. When we measure ourselves against that ideal, we're in 'the GAP'. However, when we measure ourselves against our previous selves, we're in 'the GAIN'.
That is where The GAP and The GAIN concept comes in. It was developed…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I was introduced to small business when I was six years old—my parents purchased a drug store to run (that drug store, after being sold forty years ago, is still in business). When I started my agency, there were few books on how to start, grow, and stay in business that didn’t tout traditional thinking. I think outside the triangle. I never thought I would be an author, and I am writing book #6! I write books today that I wish were available when I started my business journey: unique strategies coupled with actionable steps to grow. I hope these books provide inspiration and ideas!
If you are looking to revolutionize how you close deals and to use techniques from one of the best in the business, this is the book for you.
This book helps you use strategies from Warren Buffet to negotiate like a pro and develop deals your mom would be proud of. I loved the use of storytelling in the book and the examples that are laid out for readers.
Silver Winner--Tops Sales World's Best Sales and Marketing Book
Revealed: the winning blueprint for making deals like The Oracle of Omaha
Warren Buffett didn't become the world's third wealthiest individual on his investing instincts alone. Buffett is a master dealmaker. In fact, one of his greatest single successes came when he closed multiple deals to own 100 percent of the Government Employees Insurance Company--also known as GEICO.
Highly successful dealmakers themselves, Tom Searcy and Henry DeVries have been studying Buffett's unique approach for many years. Now, they reveal the secrets of the Oracle of Omaha. How to Close a Deal…
I was introduced to small business when I was six years old—my parents purchased a drug store to run (that drug store, after being sold forty years ago, is still in business). When I started my agency, there were few books on how to start, grow, and stay in business that didn’t tout traditional thinking. I think outside the triangle. I never thought I would be an author, and I am writing book #6! I write books today that I wish were available when I started my business journey: unique strategies coupled with actionable steps to grow. I hope these books provide inspiration and ideas!
Sometimes we think too small when it comes to growing our business. This is one of two of Dan’s books that I have on this list, and I love Dan as a writer and storyteller.
I loved how he uses psychology to help business owners like me unlock potential growth and get over the fear of “getting too big”. This book also helped me to think about how I am approaching growth (incremental versus exponential) and how that is holding back my business.
Expanding upon one of his high-level foundational teachings: Strategic Coach co-founder Dan Sullivan explains why achieving 10X growth is easier than going for 2X growth.
Dan Sullivan, the world's leading coach for highly successful entrepreneurs, wants you to know that achieving 10X growth is exponentially easier than striving for 2X growth. Most find this idea confusing at first because simply imagining 10X growth causes them to think they need to do 10X more work to achieve it. However, being a 10X entrepreneur is nothing like what most people think.
10X is not the outcome; it's a counterintuitive process you can…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I was introduced to small business when I was six years old—my parents purchased a drug store to run (that drug store, after being sold forty years ago, is still in business). When I started my agency, there were few books on how to start, grow, and stay in business that didn’t tout traditional thinking. I think outside the triangle. I never thought I would be an author, and I am writing book #6! I write books today that I wish were available when I started my business journey: unique strategies coupled with actionable steps to grow. I hope these books provide inspiration and ideas!
As the final book on my list, I refer to this book often, and you will, too. I wrote one of the chapters in the book, and the level of expertise in this book still shocks me!
This book helps me to do all things marketing, and provides specific actions that I can take as a business owner today to up my digital marketing game.
35 marketing experts joined best-selling author, entrepreneur, and marketing strategist Mark Schaefer to write this practical guide for small business owners.. You’d love to spend less for better marketing results. . The challenge is knowing what will work.. With market conditions, your customer base, and marketing itself evolving, getting the maximum return on your marketing investment is a moving target.. Yet your business’s growth depends on your ability to adapt.. And with so many voices vying for attention, how do you stand out?. This guide answers the questions small business owners are asking to make smarter, more cost-effective marketing decisions..…
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been dismayed by the humdrum monotony of everyday life. Of course, that is why one is drawn to books. The books on this list are historical fiction with otherworldly wonder. The world of the imagination is not an escape; it’s a portal to a new view of life. I’ve written four books set in the Italian Renaissance and two set in ancient Britain. Because of the depth of research, each one has taken about eight years. I’m constantly astonished at how imagination can fill the gaps history leaves. Striving always for plausibility, it is encouraging to count historians and archaeologists amongst my readers, cheering me on.
I was still at school when I came across Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and was absorbed into the world of ancient Greece.
I knew then what was missing from history lessons: any sense of being there, of feeling emotion for the characters, of being gripped. I went on to read all her books and took to philosophy and Platonism because of them.
When I put the book back on the library shelf, I made a vow: let me do for others what this author has done for me.
Theseus is the grandson of the King of Troizen, but his paternity is shrouded in mystery - can he really be the son of the god Poseidon? When he discovers his father's sword beneath a rock, his mother must reveal his true identity: Theseus is the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and is his only heir. So begins Theseus's perilous journey to his father's palace to claim his birth right, escaping bandits and ritual king sacrifice in Eleusis, to slaying the Minotaur in Crete. Renault reimagines the Theseus myth, creating an original, exciting story.
I have written four novels that involve crime in one way or another, but I do not consider myself a crime novelist. I simply find crime stories offer a compelling way to explore universal human experiences. I was a prosecutor when I was younger, so I try to bring a level of fluency in criminal law to my novels, but the usual warning applies: this is fiction, and it is better that a story be authentic than actually true.
In the current media environment, it is hard for us to do the one essential thing that novel readers must do: suspend disbelief—to read something that we know is not true, yet accept it as if it were true. It is a cynical time. We have learned to mistrust what we read.
So what is a novelist to do? Well, one way to win over skeptical readers is by a simple trick, one that I love (as both reader and writer): the novelist appears in his own novel. My novel uses a similar device, beginning with a novelist-narrator who bears a striking resemblance to me. These five novels all use a similar strategy.
The first book, American Pastoral, is one of my favorites. Philip Roth frequently borrowed from his own life in his novels, but to me, this is his most effective blend of fact and fiction. The novel lifts…
Philip Roth's fiction has often explored the human need to demolish, to challenge, to oppose, to pull apart. Now, writing with deep understanding, with enormous power and scope and great storytelling energy, he focuses on the counterforce: the longing for an ordinary life. Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant, postwar America. He has a beautiful wife - Miss New Jersey 1949 - and a lively, precocious daughter, Merry. She is the apple of his eye…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
It’s not my fault! My foremothers were strong, capable, compassionate women. Angry with the silence around women in history, I have been passionate about restoring the voices and contributions of women to history and culture. I have written several books on neglected aspects of women's history that have been translated into 12 languages. While a voracious reader of history, I enjoy historical fiction (when it’s done well). I will never recommend a novel that does not respect this. And I love author’s notes and/or historical notes where the author explains what is real and what is imagined; and resources to learn more about the subject of the novel.
Set in a beguinage in 1310 Paris, which is churning with palace intrigue and the pyres of the Inquisition. I felt drawn into the lives of these beguines as they strive to hold their place in society with strong political forces set against their independent lifestyle.
I felt the smells, sights, and sounds of medieval Paris. An innocent Maheut arrives, unintentionally stirring up life among the beguines as they and the girl try to outwit the Inquisitors. Maheut is hunted, but the beguines are not sure by whom, and she won’t talk. A great resolution.
'A rich, surprising and devastating story of a female institution long-forgotten' Marj Charlier, author of The Rebel Nun
A heretical text, a vengeful husband, a forbidden love...
It's 1310 and Paris is alive with talk of the trial of the Templars. Religious repression is on the rise, and the smoke of execution pyres blackens the sky above the city. But sheltered behind the walls of Paris's great beguinage, a community of women are still free to work, study and live their lives away from the domination of men.
When a wild, red-haired child clothed in rags arrives…
It’s hard to pinpoint where my interest in cold cases began, but I remember reading about the Isdal Woman and being intrigued. She was found in Norway in 1970, badly burned, with the labels cut off her clothes. Police discovered fake identities and disguises in suitcases left at the railway station, but, to this day, have no idea who she was. I’m a member of several Facebook groups where people investigate cold cases, and I’m always amazed at how these clues can be put together so many years later. Or, in some cases, how some people go unnamed, or crimes unsolved despite all the resources at our fingertips.
This is a brilliantly plotted book with a fascinating protagonist.
It’s fair to say that Cam Killick has issues stemming from his time in the Marines. He starts looking into a decades-old case of a family who went missing on the way back from a party. It was widely accepted that their car had probably crashed into the marshes and had lain there for thirty years. But when Cam finds the car, the remains of the family are nowhere to be found.
'Compelling and so atmospheric ... the perfect new crime series to dive into' HEAT 'Rob Parker is a master of the stone-cold twist' JANICE HALLETT 'Brilliant pacing ... a great addition to your to-be-read stacks' PRIMA 'The very definition of a one-sitting read' ROBERT RUTHERFORD
Cam Killick left the special forces with a handful of medals, stories he can't share and PTSD so bad he can only find peace under water. Working as a salvage diver in the Norfolk Broads keeps him sane, and the county's many tales of the lost keep him busy.
The topic is essentially letters, in this book, letters written during the Second World War. My grandmother, my mother and aunt – and other aunts – all wrote voluminously to each other. They also kept diaries. Every day is recorded, often in duplicate. I have them all – an absolute treasure trove of firsthand history. I myself, from the age of 12, have had penfriends in large numbers. My mother and I both belonged to "correspondence magazines." Letters were central to our lives. I still write long, newsy emails as if they were letters, plus some actual sheets of paper with writing on, sent in an envelope…
I had long wanted to read this book, and when I finally got around to it, I was absolutely immersed in it from start to finish.
The writing is magnificent, the subject grueling. Nobody in it is safe. It is an unflinching account, told from first-hand experience but fictionalized, of the realities of war at sea. I have read several other Monsarrats, and they are all brilliant.
This one fits best with my own quieter story of the women left behind. An additional detail makes it even more appropriate, because my Aunt Wendy knew Nicholas Monsarrat.
Based on the author's own vivid experiences, The Cruel Sea is the nail-biting story of the crew of HMS Compass Rose, a corvette assigned to protect convoys in World War Two.
Darting back and forth across the icy North Atlantic, Compass Rose played a deadly cat and mouse game with packs of German U-boats lying in wait beneath the ocean waves.
Packed with tension and vivid descriptions of agonizing U-boat hunts, this tale of the most bitter and chilling campaign of the war tells of ordinary, heroic men who had to face a brutal menace which would strike without warning…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
When I was a little boy growing up in Philadelphia, I couldn’t have dolls. So I collected Hot Wheels, gave them all wild names and backstories, and moved them around through scandal and adventure on our pool table. As a voracious reader, I devoured hefty novels from my parent’s bookcase as a teenager, and in the 1980s, I adored prime-time soaps like Dallas and Dynasty. I also discovered great midcentury melodramas from filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Mark Robson, leading to reading related books. Today I review books for the New York Times, and I remain passionate for period melodrama. (Don’t get me started on my Mad Men obsession!)
I once asked Agnes Nixon, the creator of All My Children and other legendary daytime serials, how she became so good at plotting them. She replied, “I am a very good eavesdropper.”
I suspect O’Hara was, too. His 1959 epic (900 pages!) about a social-climbing, status-mad banker and the fashionable coterie of vipers he navigates to attain success at any cost is dipped in old-money style and privilege masking an ever-rotting core.
It’s packed with the one thing any great beach read needs: people keeping secrets who will do anything to protect them.
