Here are 87 books that Katalin Street fans have personally recommended if you like
Katalin Street.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I came to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1988 to serve as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge (played by Martin Sheen in the movie Selma). I was convinced that the death penalty could be justly administered, and seeing Ted Bundy’s final appeal did little to change my mind. Subsequent cases, however, slowly worked a change in my attitude as I saw an execution’s effect on everyone involved in the process. My passion comes from this behind-the-scenes look at capital punishment in America.
I loved the balance between the anguish of the family of Gary Gilmore’s victims and his desire to be executed as soon as possible. I was moved by the desperate attempts of his self-appointed lawyers to delay his death, and I’m not sure I’ve ever answered the question for myself whether a killer’s wish to die should be respected.
Wouldn’t a life sentence be an even greater punishment?
In the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood. For those murders Gilmore was sent to languish on Death Row - and could confidently expect his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment. In America, no one had been executed for ten years.
But Gary Gilmore wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for the right to do so made him into a world-wide celebrity - and ensured that his execution turned into the most gruesome media event of the decade.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
The idea for my first novel came from a 1946 study of Alabama parolees, linking individual characteristics to the likelihood of recidivism. The outcomes were surprising in many instances: “promising factors” such as education, profession, and intelligence didn’t correlate with good behavior. This got me thinking about the lasting effectsof imprisonment. Sentences don’t necessarily end when an inmate walks out the prison door. I see this again and again in the previously incarcerated students I teach at Helena College—they’ve been released from an institution, but mental and physical imprisonment lingers, and sometimes grows. The books on this list don’t shy away from that hard reality.
Set during the 2005 bus-driver strikes in Iran, this book explores imprisonment at nearly every level—from the confinement of a totalitarian regime to the physical and psychological torture of a political prisoner, to the locked doors of one’s own mind, to the escape sought (and sometimes found) in heroine. What sticks with me most, however, is the interior exploration of the main character, Yunus, and the way seemingly small decisions lead to enormous consequences.
An critically-acclaimed Iranian author makes his American literary debut with this powerful and harrowing psychological portrait of modern Iran-an unprecedented and urgent work of fiction with echoes of The Stranger, 1984, and The Orphan Master's Son-that exposes the oppressive and corrosive power of the state to bend individual lives.
Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man since the unexpected deaths of his father and mother years ago, he is decidedly apolitical-even during the driver's strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his.
I have lived primarily in Vermont, but my relationship to a remote portion of Maine wilderness is the one geographical consistency in my 81 years. Trained as an academic, I did have literary influences, but my chief influences derived from my early decades among men and women whose arduous existences in the great North Woods preceded electricity, power tools, and modern household conveniences. These men and women had to make their own entertainment, and they did so by way of storytelling, and their stories became a kind of community property. Whatever the genres of my 24 books, I have sought to emulate the timing and precision that these masters commanded.
What I admire so deeply in Ms. Robinson’s work is her capacity to tackle immense themes (from abolitionism to free will) in prose that is deliberately understated and yet stirs me deep in my soul and elicits my deep concerns for her characters, in this case, the title figure.
When I first read Robinson, I thought of B.B. King’s comment on the guitarist Johnny Winter, famous for his prolific, note-opulent solos. When asked about these tours de force, Mr. King diplomatically said, “Sometimes it’s not what you put in but what you leave out.” I know that, as primarily a poet, I can become seduced by the “lyrical” capacities of style; Robinson serves as a good check on that yen for excess and shows how presentations that might seem artless can shake the very earth.
'Grace and intelligence . . . [her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' BARACK OBAMA
'Radiant and visionary' SARAH PERRY, GUARDIAN
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.
Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
The idea for my first novel came from a 1946 study of Alabama parolees, linking individual characteristics to the likelihood of recidivism. The outcomes were surprising in many instances: “promising factors” such as education, profession, and intelligence didn’t correlate with good behavior. This got me thinking about the lasting effectsof imprisonment. Sentences don’t necessarily end when an inmate walks out the prison door. I see this again and again in the previously incarcerated students I teach at Helena College—they’ve been released from an institution, but mental and physical imprisonment lingers, and sometimes grows. The books on this list don’t shy away from that hard reality.
This is the only piece of nonfiction on this list, but the plot is as tortuous and epic as any good novel. This book helped me understand the vast inequities inherent in our prison industry—from mandatory sentencing to privatization to the abhorrent practice of convict leasing, aptly known as “slavery by another name.” If there’s any hope of rehabilitating the country’s prison system, we must learn its history—as ugly and unjust as it might be. This is a hard read, but an immensely important one.
In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. A pioneer in criminal justice severity―from assembly-line executions to supermax isolation, from mandatory sentencing to prison privatization―Texas is the most locked-down state in the most incarcerated country in the world. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, explains how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became a template for the nation.
Drawing on the individual stories as well as authoritative research, Texas Tough reveals the true origins of America's prison juggernaut and points toward a more just and humane future.
Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull; Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Vice President of The Association for Israel Studies. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). He was twice a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Faculty of Laws, University College London. Raphael Has published extensively about Israel, including Basic Issues in Israeli Democracy(Hebrew), Israeli Democracy at the Crossroads, and Public Responsibility in Israel (with Ori Arbel-Ganz and Asa Kasher Hebrew).
Grossman has a way with words. There are not many people who master Hebrew as he does. His ability to express ideas, thoughts, sentiments, characters, the inner human streams that run in our hearts and minds is admirable. Grossman takes you by the hand, slowly makes you immerse in the story, your soul intertwined with the pictures he paints, you become part of all that is happening to the heroes, all the twists and turns, the emotions, the turmoil, the storms, the fears, the hopes, the love.
This book is about the love for the land of Israel and about the love of a mother to her child. There are similarities and differences between the two that Grossman delicately deciphers. I have never read such a characterization of a relationship between parents and children. It is deep. It is penetrating. It is true. It sweeps you off your feet.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A stunning novel that tells the powerful story of Ora, an Israli mother, and her extraordinary love for her son, Ofer, in a haunting meditation on war and family.
“One of the few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” —The New York Times Book Review
Just before his release from service in the Israeli army, Ora’s son Ofer is sent back to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, so that no bad news can reach her, Ora sets out on an…
I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. I lived there until I was six. I was a child from America’s Secret War in Laos, a child who knew very little of the outside world before my family sought refuge in America. Much of my life’s work has been devoted to a search for peace, to understand the forces that put families in situations like mine. I have published widely on the topic, written of it in books for both adults and children.
Hosseini's book is timely and important. It is a story inspired by the image of a child washed up on the beach of a foreign shore. It tells the story of another child, whose parent send them off on a vessel across a wide ocean in search of a less turbulent future. The art is sweeping. The words travel far into the heart.
An illustrated book on the refugee crisis that will break your heart in under 48 pages, from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed.
"Intensely moving. . .Powerfully evocative of the plight in which displaced populations find themselves."– Kirkus, STARRED Review
"Hosseini's story, aimed at readers of all ages, does not dwell on nightmarish fates; instead, its emotional power flows from the love of a father for his son."– Publishers Weekly, STARRED BOX Review
A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’m the youngest of five, and my siblings are what shaped me and my world. Growing up, I never felt alone, except climbing the stairs to bed half an hour before anyone else (such an injustice!). We played cards and games and had noisy discussions throughout my childhood and youth, and we still do. I wouldn’t be me without siblings. It’s the relationship that most fascinates me. There are siblings in all the books I’ve written and probably in all the books I’ll ever write. It’s not a theme I look for when I read, but I recognize the feeling when I encounter it and it feels like home.
I just read this book—it’s been in my TBR pile since 2004—and it’s why I chose the theme of siblings. I loved the voice of this novel, the narrator’s young outsider perspective, her humour and heart—Daisy is such an unexpected character to tell a war story through. But what I loved most about the book is the sibling vibe in the house of her cousins. Edmond, Piper, Osbert, and Isaac—each of them is who she/he is because of their siblings. You could remove one from the plot (well, not Edmond!) but the others wouldn’t be themselves anymore. We feel that through Daisy’s thin bones: these people belong to each other, and maybe she could belong there too.
How I Live Now is an original and poignant book by Meg Rosoff
How I Live Now is the powerful and engaging story of Daisy, the precocious New Yorker and her English cousin Edmond, torn apart as war breaks out in London, from the multi award-winning Meg Rosoff. How I Live Now has been adapted for the big screen by Kevin Macdonald, starring Saoirse Ronan as Daisy and releases in 2013.
Fifteen-year-old Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live in…
I wrote my first thriller at age 8 about a girl who ran away and joined the circus. For later works, I, a pediatric physician, did opt to follow my English teachers’ guidance to write about what you know, including science, medicine, psychology, journalism, and my twin home countries of America and Greece. As YS Pascal, I wrote the Zygan Emprise Trilogy, which blended ancient Greek history, mythology, and literature. As Linda Reid, I co-authored the award-winning Sammy Greene thriller series with Dr. Deborah Shlian and was eager to fly investigative reporter Sammy and her ex-cop friend Gus Pappajohn to the shores of modern Athens to solve an ancient and modern mystery.
Katherine, a Greek immigrant to the US, took her American children to Greece in the late 1930s to live on her family’s farm and escape from the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Nazi invaders trapped the family in Greece during the Occupation and the end of World War II. Based on a true family story, American Kid movingly describes the experiences of the children in the remote mountain village of Katherine’s birth, and their efforts to survive the occupation of their home by Nazis. Would they ever see their beloved America again? An authentic glimpse of the devastating war’s impact on innocent youth and the value of hope.
For Katherine and her three American children, Greece was meant to be a one-year refuge from the late 1930’s Depression. Her husband’s family-owned orchard should have provided for their well-being, but instead embroiled them in legal debate. WWII Axis bombings of Kalamata prompted the young family to flee to the remote mountain village of Katherine’s birth, but Nazi invasion—and seemingly endless occupation of their village and their house—trapped them there until the war's end. Told through the eyes of John, Katherine’s youngest child, he shares a universal story of fear and frustration faced by all innocent civilians during war in…
Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”
I’m going old-school, back to one of the grandfathers of science fiction, Robert Heinlein.
Not only is his book a masterful example of character-driven storytelling, but it takes a critical eye to many of the things our current society takes for granted as being “true” and “right,” finding them wanting. It’s also been a huge influence on me in my writing, as have many of Heinlein’s other works, and I couldn’t not put it in here.
In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison...
Life isn't easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV.
When humble technician Mannie O'Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities... or become friends.
And perhaps overthrow the government while they're at it.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My name is Jenny Harrison and my writing career started in 1997 in South Africa with Debbie's Story, which to my astonishment, became a bestseller. Thinking this was going to be an easy route to fame and fortune, I continued writing after migrating to New Zealand. Alas, the road to a bestseller is rife with disappointment but that didn't stop me from writing a bunch of paranormal and humorous novels. Circumstances led me to writing about families caught up in World War II. I don’t write about battles or generals, I write about ordinary people who face the unimagined cost of war and survive.
This book is by Alan Furst whose research is impeccable. His storytelling can be jerky and maybe chaotic but that’s how things were in the time he writes about. His characters are drawn from the sinister underbelly of war, the men and women who work in the shadows. His writing is intense, I remember the scenes as chaotic, with no character arc or happy ending, but a mirror of the times when life was lived moment by moment.
September 1939. As Warsaw falls to Hitler’s Wehrmacht, Captain Alexander de Milja is recruited by the intelligence service of the Polish underground. His mission: to transport the national gold reserve to safety, hidden on a refugee train to Bucharest. Then, in the back alleys and black-market bistros of Paris, in the tenements of Warsaw, with partizan guerrillas in the frozen forests of the Ukraine, and at Calais Harbor during an attack by British bombers, de Milja fights in the war of the shadows in a world without rules, a world of danger, treachery, and betrayal.
