Books like Machine — picked by fans

I’ve always been drawn to stories where light trembles on the edge of annihilation. The Deathly Shadow grew from that space—where broken people must still try, even when hope is an ember. I’m especially interested in how violence shapes children—their choices, their trust, and the way they carry themselves through a collapsing world. I strive to write characters with real emotional weight and a filmic sense of presence—where every gesture, glance, and silence means something. I believe the darkest stories, when told with care, can reveal what we most need to protect. This book explores the cost of survival—and whether love, memory, and courage are enough to challenge even the worst of endings.

I became hooked into science fiction as a kid the day I read an illustrated book of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. From then on, science fiction became an important part of my reading repertoire. Having wide-ranging interests, I enjoy military techno-thrillers, Anglo-French naval warfare, Greek/Egyptian/Roman mythology, most sciences, history of religions, with an occasional novel that strays from the norm and adds a sparkle to my reading. Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills are very close to my heart. Just shows that I’m different. After all, I must do something when I am not writing my own novels! Although I have an extensive library of modern science fiction works, I am fond of many oldies.

In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.

In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.

I was born in 1957, the year the Space Race started when the USSR launched its first satellite and grew up with astronauts and cosmonauts on the TV. Yuri Gagarin and Gordon Cooper were familiar names to me as a child but I only really started to take notice as the Apollo programme ramped up. Science fiction influenced me at an very early age with books like Kemlo and Tom Swift and, having pestered my English teacher with my embryonic works decided at seventeen to write my own novel. Some years later and just short of sixty I finally wrote Sirkkusaga and now have seven published works out there - as well as two anthologies.

Ever since I picked up an old copy of Richard Halliburton’s Book of Wonders as a child, I’ve known that exploring other cultures and countries is something I wanted to experience for the rest of my life. From then on, I’ve traveled, taken cross-cultural studies, and managed international teams as a tech marketer–and my passion for new people and places hasn’t ceased. I love reading (and writing) about the liminal spaces in history–the times and places that aren’t easy to define and don’t make it into standard history books. This list reflects my interests, and I hope it broadens the horizons of other readers. 

Thrillers are just that—thrilling. But thrillers with lots of explosions and gunfights aren’t that appealing to me since I know the hero will make it. With realistic domestic, at-home-style thrillers, the thrilling nature is how the scenarios could really happen. Those are the most thrilling ideas, the ones I can see how they could actually happen to someone—or to me. That makes it exciting. This is why I read many of them and have written quite a few, too, because there’s nothing more thrilling than thinking your home, or the people in it, isn’t as safe as you thought. 

I’m a family physician and therapist, but I was a book-lover first. At age seventeen, I had to choose between studying medicine or literature, and I chose a profession with a clear-cut career path. But books and writing never lost their hold, and I began to write seriously in my late thirties. I’ve had four novels published, and I’m well into my fifth. Being a writer makes me a better doctor, more empathic and curious, and more engaged with patients’ narratives. Medicine is such a rich and fascinating field, and I feel privileged to write about it from an insider’s point of view.

There's something about broken people trying to do good that has always resonated with me. In basic training, a drill sergeant with debilitating PTSD told us what combat would be like through a storm of choking sobs and a haze of tears. He needed us to know. Even if it broke him. Working as an investigator in Denver and Washington, I watched people with complicated pasts and uncertain futures fight tooth and nail (sometimes literally) to put human traffickers behind bars. Literature has always been a bridle for that wildness I saw in the world. A tool for taking the ghashing, stomping, unruliness of the human experience and making it rideable, relatable, survivable.

Historian Doug Hocking grew up on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation of New Mexico. He knows her peoples, towns, and trails. He has completed advanced studies in history, his first love, anthropology, and historical archaeology. Since retiring as an armored cavalry officer, Doug has owned his own business. With this background he has insight into America’s great commercial road, the Santa Fe Trail, and into battles and soldiering. He understands Apache lives as few others do.