Here are 87 books that Missionaries fans have personally recommended if you like
Missionaries.
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I‘ve been thinking about the forces that drive humanity together and pull us apart at the same time since my late teens; back then, I started reading the classical dystopian tales. The (perceived) end of time always speaks to me, because I think it‘s in those moments of existential dread that we learn who we really are. That‘s why I like reading (and reviewing) books, and also why those topics are an undertone in my own writings. I do hope you enjoy these 5 books as much as I have.
This was probably one of the most intense experiences with non-linear storytelling I ever had, and that did something to me I could not have predicted.
In fact, while reading this book, I started to turn the story into something of a philosophical discourse in my head.
I really like how this book is at the same time utterly insane in parts—and I do say that with the greatest respect, it‘s the good kind of insane—while at the same time, it explores themes of dealing with earth-shattering events on a very individual level.
For me, the icing on the cake is that Kurt Vonnegut manages to even mix in a little history lesson there, because that bombing of the prisoners in Dresden? That did happen. And I didn‘t even learn about it in school—I learned it from this novel!
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had…
Annie Kurtz joins the Marines, deploys to Afghanistan, and has to make a split-second decision. She can follow her orders. Or she can follow her conscience. Nick Willard is a journalist who has pined for Annie since they were in prep school together. While doing his job, he discovers what…
Each of these novels, in their own way, forces us to confront the realities of war and power, showing how fragile humanity truly is. They’ve inspired me to reflect on how interconnected we are, especially regarding the scars of conflict. I am reminded of the John Donne poem that inspired Hemingway’s title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)–which begins: “No man is an island, intire of its selfe; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine.” War doesn’t just affect the soldiers: war has its hooks in us all.
This book is one of the most haunting accounts of war I've ever read. Through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, Remarque immerses you in the horrific realities of World War I. The sheer brutality of trench warfare, the disillusionment with nationalism, and the emotional devastation of losing comrades all play out in a way that feels as immediate now as it must have been when the book was first published. My grandfather fought in the First World War, and though he never spoke about it, I believe the emotional scars he carried shaped who he became. All Quiet makes me think about how those invisible wounds persist today—worldwide. War may evolve regarding weapons and strategies, but the psychological impact is chillingly consistent.
This novel isn’t just about the battlefield. It’s about the inner lives of soldiers and the way war corrupts not just bodies but minds,…
The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war - of any war - told for a whole generation of victims.
Each of these novels, in their own way, forces us to confront the realities of war and power, showing how fragile humanity truly is. They’ve inspired me to reflect on how interconnected we are, especially regarding the scars of conflict. I am reminded of the John Donne poem that inspired Hemingway’s title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)–which begins: “No man is an island, intire of its selfe; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine.” War doesn’t just affect the soldiers: war has its hooks in us all.
I had the pleasure of studying with Susan Muaddi Darraj during my master’s program, and her latest work is an incredible exploration of the immigrant experience, especially for Palestinian Americans. This book centers on the personal experience of families living in Baltimore, spanning generations, as they confront the dislocation and identity crises that come from living between two worlds. Darraj’s portrayal of exile and the trauma of displacement feels especially poignant given our current global crises, where the concept of “home” is increasingly complicated for so many.
What resonates with me most is the way Darraj explores both the personal dimensions of power. Whether through the lens of nation-states, family dynamics, or cultural expectations, there is a delicate balance that individuals must navigate to survive. This is a deeply personal meditation on how identity is shaped in the aftermath of conflict and how, even when geographically distant, the weight of…
An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore-from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich-lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families-the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars-Palestinian immigrants who've all found a different welcome in America.
Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose…
Annie Kurtz joins the Marines, deploys to Afghanistan, and has to make a split-second decision. She can follow her orders. Or she can follow her conscience. Nick Willard is a journalist who has pined for Annie since they were in prep school together. While doing his job, he discovers what…
Each of these novels, in their own way, forces us to confront the realities of war and power, showing how fragile humanity truly is. They’ve inspired me to reflect on how interconnected we are, especially regarding the scars of conflict. I am reminded of the John Donne poem that inspired Hemingway’s title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)–which begins: “No man is an island, intire of its selfe; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine.” War doesn’t just affect the soldiers: war has its hooks in us all.
This book spans generations and continents, from Grenada to North America, exploring the intergenerational legacies of colonialism, revolution, and survival. Collins writes–using fiction and poetry–about the immigration journey of Louise Langdon Norton Little, mother of the activist Malcolm X, a Grenadian woman born in a small rural village in a deeply colonial society that offered little to no education for working-class children.
She emigrated to the US through Canada and became involved in the black civil rights movement led by activist Marcus Garvey. She embraced the black civil rights and the women’s revolutions while struggling with the realities of home life and inequality within the sexes. With minimal facts to go on, Collins, a distinguished Canadian novelist, creates a profoundly moving work that reveals the heroism and tragedy of a life spent battling sexism, racism, and colonialism while finding her voice and purpose.
The mother of the revolutionary firebrand Malcolm X was a Grenadian woman born at the turn of the 20th century in a small rural community in a deeply colonial society where access to education had only just begun for the children of working people. She emigrated to Canada and then the USA, where she became involved in the struggle for Black dignity and human rights then led by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Malcolm X and others of his siblings have testified to their mother's powerful influence on their lives. Within the sparse facts of Louise Langdon…
In my graduate studies, I had a fantastic professor who was able to make the politics of international criminal justice one of my favorite subjects. The intersection of law, politics, peace, and conflict pulled me in. But the fact that it also touches on human rights, state sovereignty, and the prevention of mass atrocities got me hooked. I ended up doing extensive research on the International Criminal Court and how it interacts with UN peace operations, and I have subsequently been teaching peace and justice at Leiden University. I publish regularly on these topics as well and am the associate editor of International Peacekeeping, one of the leading journals on international conflict management.
If you want to have an informed conversation about the effectiveness of international criminal justice, it is vital to understand two things. One, that whether or not it’s effective entirely depends on how you measure ‘effectiveness’. And two, that the local context in which an international court operates is going to have a major effect on how effective it can be at anything.
I enjoyed Wierda’s book because she clearly works out these important starting points and studies the ICC’s impact in four very different countries: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya and Uganda. She also is careful to distinguish between different kinds of effectiveness (systemic, transformative, reparative and demonstrative), enabling us to have much more sophisticated conversations about the results of ICC interventions.
The International Criminal Court seeks to end impunity for the world's worst crimes, to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on the domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC is having a normative impact on domestic legal…
I wear many aprons. I am a writer; a professor of creative writing and literature; a mother to five children – daughters and sons; the wife of a criminal defense attorney; and the daughter of therapists. I read and write at the intersection of these influences: crime, motherhood, and psychology. When I teach children’s literature, I lean toward the Brothers Grimm. Childhood is grittier – more suspenseful – when we darken the stories. The same is true of motherhood. Nobody wants to read about a perfect mother, especially when mothers spend so much of our psychic energy worried about our children in the forms of violence, illness, and death. I prefer to seek out books that complicate the otherwise pristine stories of our lives we pretend to tell.
So much of this book is filled with folklore and magic, but the provocative and devastating ending, which raises important questions about motherhood and the fine line between animal and human consciousness, guts the reader as any honest book should. I’ve always been fascinated by the wide range of strong opinions people feel in response to a simple question: Are pets equal to children in the hierarchy of living things? I was fully transported into this surprising exploration of violence and motherhood.
*Finalist for the US National Book Award for Translated Literature 2020*
In Colombia's brutal jungle, childless Damaris develops an intense and ultimately doomed relationship with an orphaned puppy.
Colombia's Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. In this constant struggle, nothing is taken for granted.
Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age 'when women dry up,' as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt an orphaned puppy. But this act may bring more than just affection into her home.…
Emotional novels are my forte. I love to read them, and I especially love to write them. Most folks say they want a book they can’t put down – but I search for ones that I have to put down and walk away from long enough to pull myself together. I want stories that linger with me, that infiltrate my dreams – books that inspire me to create works in their honor. While my life is great, sometimes I just want to get away to a world where right prevails, long conquers all, and holding out for a hero is not an impossible dream. Trust me, these picks will not disappoint.
My God, this book ripped my heart out and put it back together again. I love stories that make me cry and I’ve made that a goal in my own writing. I want to make the reader laugh, weep, and swoon – then I know I’ve done my job. This book fulfills those requirements in spades. I adored this story. I’ve reread this book a dozen times or more. The characters, Nathan & Bella, will be with me forever.
It was supposed to be simple. All Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had to do was rescue three young girls from a Columbia drug cartel, then allow himself to be captured long enough to draw out a government spy. That was before his mission went disastrously wrong...and before his wife, Bella, was told that Nathan was never coming home.Bella's mourned her husband's death for three long years. But she has no idea he's still alive. Forced to assume a new identity, the man Nathan is now dead. If he can get back to his wife, can he keep the secret of…
I’ve turned lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. My Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Readers will love Detective Cruz’s complex plots, fast action, and exotic location. I’m originally from upstate New York, the setting for the upcoming Galliano Club thriller series. My family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. After killing two people, including his wife, my great-grandfather eluded a state-wide manhunt. He was never brought to justice.
The tropical atmosphere of contemporary Medellin,
Colombia is the setting for the first book in the Nikki Garcia corporate
espionage thriller series. Still reeling from her young son’s tragic death,
savvy international auditor Nikki Garcia accepts an assignment to investigate
fraud allegations at the Colombian affiliate of a multinational corporation. I
loved Nikki’s sharp-edged inner voice and canny observations.
The impeccable cultural details really caught my attention.
For example, right in the first scene, Nikki watches a wealthy businessman
light a cigar. From the Churchill brand to the way he lights it with a strip of
cedarwood to the way he makes her wait, not only could I see the scene in my
mind’s eye, but I could smell the tang of burning wood and tobacco and resent
his snobby attitude. So. Well. Done.
Infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is long gone from
Medellin, but his dangerous legacy is not…
Named Best Fiction Book of the Year, 2017, by Killer Nashville!
Handsome Colombian men and life-threatening danger were not normally a part of Nikki's auditing job, but this assignment was anything but normal. Despite her emotional wounds, she accepts the challenge as a way to overcome the loss of her young son in a tragic event.
In the midst of the male-dominated business world in Colombia, she investigates mismanagement allegations and uncovers a sinister plot involving fraud . . . and possibly murder. She also discovers an attractive man who seems to have feelings for her. As her relationship with…
The newspaper crime beat sunk its talons into my flesh nearly 50 years ago and has never let go. As Shakespeare knew, the best stories—about love and hate, life and death, good and evil—can be found on the daily police blotter. I’ve spent my career writing about those tales in newspapers, online, and in books. My interest has never really been the gore—a tally of the knife wounds or the volume of blood lost. No, my fascination is the mind and the psychology of the criminal, who always believes he is smarter than the rest of us—and is generally proven wrong.
Do you like to root for the bad guy? Then George Jung, the central figure in this true crime classic about the Columbia-to-America cocaine snowstorm of the 1980s, might just be your man.
Author Porter weaves a brisk, vivid narrative about his anti-hero Jung, a likable goofball stoner who stumbles into the big-time international coke biz and isn’t smart enough to get out (and he had his chances, lord knows).
Johnny Depp did a memorable job of portraying Jung in the film version of Blow (released in 2001), but the Porter’s book takes the reader three or four levels deeper into the absurdities of Jung’s narcotics hellscape.
BLOW is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pable Escobar's Medellin cartel-- the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine, turning a drug used primarily by the entertainment elite into a massive…
I feel passionate about spreading the word about all the fantastic children’s literature set in South America. As an author and a multilingual mom whose son enjoys learning about his Latin American heritage, I’ve always brought home stacks of picture books—in Spanish and English—that celebrate Latin American cultures and settings. I’ve loved traveling to the Andes mountains and the Amazon rain forest as part of my children’s book collaborations with Indigenous women in those regions. Most of all, I love transporting young readers to these inspiring places through story.
I love that this book is based on the true story of a former garbage collector who became famous for building his own library… starting with a discarded copy of Anna Karenina that he’d found on his route.
The story tells of “two Josés” who lived in Bogotá, Colombia—a young one and an old one. We follow them throughout the week, until their favorite day—library day, when the older José welcomes the younger one and other children into his hand-collected library.
As someone who loves thrifted, upcycled, and re-used treasures, I felt delighted by this heart-warming and inspiring story for book-lovers of all ages.
A gorgeous and inspiring picture book based on the life of José Alberto Gutiérrez, a garbage collector in Bogotá, Colombia who started a library with a single discarded book found on his route.
In the city of Bogata, in the barrio of La Nueva Gloria, there live two Joses. One is a boy who dreams of Saturdays-- that's the day he gets to visit Paradise, the library. The second Jose is a garbage collector. From dusk until dawn, he scans the sidewalks as he drives, squinting in the dim light, searching household trash for hidden treasure . . . books!…
