100 Books Like Holden, After and Before

In All That’s Left To Say, dual timelines braid threads of a mystery together in a way that allowed me to contrast Hannah then and now and wonder not just about the mystery Hannah’s trying to solve, but about how she became the master sleuth she thinks she needs to be to get answers.

This contrast, as much as the mystery, drew me into the story and had me turning pages every time we jumped between past and present. Of course, the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance also helped. How Lord imbued a single tie-straightening scene with more sexual tension than most kissing scenes might be the biggest mystery in this book.

William and his wife lost their baby in its last term and had to endure the torment of an induced stillbirth.

The same thing happened to a dear friend years ago so when I heard William as embarking on this brave endeavour to write about it, I was intrigued. The publisher, Little Toller Books, decided to create a space for William’s male voice in a publishing genre that is dominated by women’s.

The result is a heart-wrenching tale of grief as William clamours to contextualise the world he has been thrown into. William’s skill as a writer lies in his depiction of the indescribable. I’m sure there were months of soul searching and pen holding before he finally hit upon a way of converting his pain into the stunning prose. I am so grateful he did. And you will be too.

After my daughter died, I wrote her hundreds and hundreds of letters. Sometimes it felt like she was the only one who could understand me. Other times, as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other, living up to what my dead daughter might have wanted for me was what kept me going. I was still deep in my grief when I first read Song for Sarah, a memoir composed of D’Arcy’s letters to her own lost child. A dear friend asked me how I could possibly read about another mother’s grief when I was so lost in my own. The answer, simply, was that D’Arcy made me feel seen. 

I found, as a history buff, The Struggle for Drug Reform to be an eye-opener about how America’s exceptionally high drug prices among other deficits in health care quality and coverage resulted from the past exercise of power by the pharmaceutical industry, the lynchpin of America’s “medico-industrial complex.”

I was impressed by historian Tobbell’s meticulously researched account of the industry’s strategic alliances with self-interested medical scientists, not just conservative political forces, and its use of anti-communist propaganda to fight off the threat of drug pricing regulations.

I personally found important her discussions of how the industry allied with the American Medical Association against universal health care, against FDA demands for evidence about drug efficacy and safety before allowing drugs on the market, and against the threat to its profits from generic drugs. 

Thrillers! At a time when the world feels so perilous, what could be more satisfying than a high-stakes story that’s fully resolved by the last page? Only one that’s also a triumphant revenge fantasy.

Delilah is sick of feeling scared. When she retaliates against her tyrannical stepfather and he winds up dead, it would be the perfect crime–if not for a hidden camera planted by her creepy classmate. Logan believes he and Delilah are meant to be together, and he’s not above using blackmail to keep her around. Told in dual POV between Delilah and the eerily calm Logan, The Obsession is fast-paced, riveting, and, if you’re new to the thriller world, an A+ introduction to the genre.

This is the first of Dervla’s Detective Cormac Reilly books - and what a wonderful start to a new series.

Here is a book as dark and unpredictable as the early spring weather in Galway. Cormac springs to life, fully formed as a complex, honest policeman, uncompromising and determined to solve a case that has re-emerged after haunting him for over twenty years.

Back then he rescued a little boy and his sister from terrible squalor and abuse. Now grown up, that boy has apparently committed suicide and his missing sister has returned claiming he was murdered and accusing the police of a cover up.

Add to this, Cormac’s own problems with a new posting in Galway, a hostile squad of detectives and a relationship he’s frantically trying to hold on to. A wonderful, complex, engrossing book.

Like Green for Danger, this is a more classic mystery novel, though it is also a dystopian fiction.

The ‘hospital’ in which it is set is a facility for the elderly, who, denied access to antibiotics, wait there until, through accident or nature, they contract an infection and are allowed to die. Yet much of the novel takes place years earlier in South Africa and England, before the antibiotic crisis when the main character meets the love of her life. How we have progressed from today’s society to the society described in the book is gradually revealed, as is the narrator’s part in it. There are also mysterious happenings in the facility.

This is a vividly told tale set in an all too believable near future with restricted access to life-saving drugs. I admire the clever conceit and the intricate interweaving of past and present and was caught up… show more.

Although heists and team-driven stories are difficult to mess up, I rarely find a gem with fun, snarky, and interesting characters like those delivered by Bardugo.

Clever banter effortlessly drives the storyline from beginning to end. When you start to feel the characters are proving to be one-dimensional and predictable, they begin to change and evolve (albeit a bit slowly for my tastes), which made for a surprisingly satisfying read (I’m including book two in this observation).

Worldbuilding is intelligent enough to keep you trusting the author when you grow concerned that the ending will be unrealistically implausible. Okay, maybe that last observation is my personal pet peeve with modern authors, but Six of Crows pulled off the credibility factor reasonably well.

I find Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies extremely valuable for teaching students about how the pharmaceutical industry translates high profits into power resources to protect and increase those profits over time.

The former New England Journal of Medicine editor exposed how drug companies enlist politicians, the FDA, and medical academia for their cause. And armies of lawyers to extend monopoly marketing rights for years.

It was my first introduction to how they spend more on marketing than research, much of that on “copy-cat” drugs of dubious superiority to ones with expired patents.

As a tax (and high drug price) payer, I was disturbed to learn how they use government funds for basic research and then rig and spin their reporting of clinical studies to inflate their products’ therapeutic value and underplay their risks. 

This is the first volume of lecture notes from the infamous Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin, “inventor” of MDMA “ecstasy or molly”. Sasha and his wife Ann are well known in the world of psychedelics for their publications based on Sasha’s incredible knowledge of chemistry, Ann’s capacity to integrate experiences, and their shared contributions to the world of psychedelia. This new book, with an introduction from Mariavittoria Mangini, is a ‘warts and all’ introduction to the chemistry of mind alteration. It is highly accessible, at times comical, and a fascinating opportunity to voyeuristically sit in on a series of Shulgin lectures that promises to pique your curiosity about our chemical lives.