Books like Kane and Abel — picked by fans

I’m a historical and dual timeline novelist, and I sometimes think I love the research phase more than the writing phase. For each novel I start with a vague idea, then buy or borrow books to read around the subject in the hope that a story will gradually emerge. I was lucky with The Lost Sister in that a chance remark of my brother’s sparked an idea, and he had a large collection of Titanic books which he let me borrow.

I’m a former crime reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. If my byline appeared on a story, you didn’t want your name anywhere in it, because you were most likely in a cell at the county jail, a bed in the ICU, or a cold locker at the county morgue. As a reporter, I often covered the same organized crime that had been so prevalent in my youth. Long before I became a reporter, I had a fascination with organized crime. Growing up in the Ohio Valley, the mob was as much a part of our communities as the steel mills. Those stories helped inspire my upcoming book, The Last Hitman.

Even though I’m an engineer and accountant by education, I love to write and growing up, I read many historical fiction and murder mysteries. History spanning from the Victorian Era until the mid-twentieth century has always fascinated me, and I’ve studied various events from that period. Therefore, I wrote A Bloody Hot Summer, a crime novel using some historical events as a background. The interwar years were the heyday of crime fiction, and that is why I set my novel during that period. While researching, I get to expand my knowledge regarding history, culture, art, language, and values of those times, which I add to the novel.

Growing up, I loved studying history, and reading historical, family sagas, and crime novels. Even though I have four degrees—three engineering and one accounting—I love to write. My goal is that my readers who don’t like history, learn it through my novels. What I like about writing is you learn not just about history not taught in school, but also other topics, including meeting and learning from very interesting people. Therefore, it is an interesting hobby to have. I am currently writing my third novel set in the 1960s, and written several articles and short stories. I have also written screenplays for two of my short stories.

I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends.  I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.

I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends.  I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.

I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends.  I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.

I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends.  I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.

I am an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington. As a previous Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury and Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, I have had quite a bit of experience watching economists’ ideas succeed and fail in the real world. I have written a number of books about policy economists and their lives in peace and wartime. (And a couple of novels too!)

Given the state of the world today, laughter truly is the best coping mechanism. The best satire is all about excess in design, intention, characterization, and deployment of attitude. The more extreme, the better; leave restraint to the prudish moralists!