Here are 100 books that Ocean's 11 fans have personally recommended if you like
Ocean's 11.
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My name is Tim O’Leary and two of my books, Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face–And Other Tales of Men in Pain and Men Behaving Badly, emanate from the minds of protagonists trying to do the right thing the wrong way or evil characters doing the wrong thing they believe to be right. I’m particularly drawn to those wonderful literary psychopaths that draw you in with compelling personalities, while reviling the reader with their heinous actions.
I found this book in college, and at the time, I thought it was the most unique book I had ever read.
Thompson’s “Gonzo Journalism” was fresh, funny, and thought-provoking, with a subtext of modern poetry, political activism, and a sense of humor I have never seen replicated.
'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..."'
Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans.
This stylish reissue of Hunter S. Thompson's iconic masterpiece, a controversial…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have always been fascinated by stories where faith, myth, and the human condition collide in unexpected ways. The kinds of books that don’t just tell a story, but make you question God, morality, suffering, and what remains of humanity when everything collapses. These are the kinds of stories that stay in your head long after you finish reading. They mix faith, myth, and the end of the world in ways that feel strangely personal and unsettling. They are not simple fantasy, not traditional horror, and not religious fiction in the usual sense. They sit in a strange space where belief, suffering, and human nature all collide.
I love this book because it turns the biblical idea of good versus evil into something frighteningly human and tangible.
What stayed with me was not the plague or the supernatural elements, but how ordinary people reveal who they truly are when the world collapses. I felt constantly unsettled by how thin the line is between morality and survival.
This story made me reflect deeply on faith, corruption, and the fragile nature of civilization in ways that few novels ever have.
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
Soon to be a television series.
'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian). Set in a virus-decimated US, King's thrilling American fantasy epic, is a Classic.
First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams.
Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of…
I love the psychology behind a good con. Con artists are the ultimate anti-heroes - masterful manipulators and highly observant, but unscrupulous at heart. And after reading a GQ article on “real-life superheroes” – people who dress up in homemade costumes and patrol their neighborhoods – I became fascinated by that psychology, too. Las Vegas is the capital of con and Cons—a unique city bursting with swindlers and cosplayers decked out in full regalia. What better place to set a crime novel? And thus—voila—Con Me Once was born.
The tagline says it all – “Whoever says crime doesn’t pay isn’t doing it right.” Pubbed in 2015, this book is often compared to Ocean’s Eleven as it contains the same main elements: the con artist and his experienced crew, the girl, Vegas. What’s opposite is the focus – this book emphasizes plot over character. While I love this book’s complex con-within-a-con, Billy Cunningham is not particularly likable as a main character. If you enjoy Vegas’s dark side, this book and its two sequels, Bad Action and Super Con, are for you.
Whoever says crime doesn't pay isn't doing it right.
There are hundreds of casinos in Las Vegas, and Billy Cunningham knows how to rip off every one. His scams are a thing of beauty-so perfectly orchestrated that onlookers believe he and his crew are winning fair and square. In a town where bosses will kill to protect their profits, Billy can't afford to make mistakes, but even the best-laid plans can go wrong...
Desperate to keep his team out of jail, Billy agrees to help stop a legendary family of thieves from taking down a casino. But he has no…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I love the psychology behind a good con. Con artists are the ultimate anti-heroes - masterful manipulators and highly observant, but unscrupulous at heart. And after reading a GQ article on “real-life superheroes” – people who dress up in homemade costumes and patrol their neighborhoods – I became fascinated by that psychology, too. Las Vegas is the capital of con and Cons—a unique city bursting with swindlers and cosplayers decked out in full regalia. What better place to set a crime novel? And thus—voila—Con Me Once was born.
If you’re burned out from all that darkness, this book takes a more lighthearted approach to the classic Vegas con novel and features another mainstay of Las Vegas entertainment – the magician. It’s not haute literature—it got mixed reviews– but it’s also a fast, fun read with a great audio version, if you prefer. It’s part of a globetrotting series with stops in Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, and Berlin, featuring thief/magician/crime novelist Charlie Howard and his literary agent, Victoria.
Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas is the next caper in a series that’s being called “impressive… comic…fresh” (Publishers Weekly--starred review). Charlie Howard isn’t only a part-time crime writer and part-time thief; he’s also a magician. For his next trick, he’ll relieve Josh Masters, the famous illusionist vying for the affections of Charlie’s friend Victoria, of $60,000 in casino chips stashed in his hotel safe.
Revenge would be sweet—if there weren’t a dead redhead floating in Masters’ bathtub and if Masters hadn’t just disappeared in a puff of smoke after cheating at roulette. Convinced that Charlie was in…
As a researcher, writer, and producer for ABC Sports, ESPN, NBC, and TNT, I first wrote two non-fiction books, Inside Figure Skating, and Sarah Hughes: Skating to the Stars (and this was before she won the Olympic Gold in 2002). With the Figure Skating Mystery series, I was finally able to tell all the juicy stories I couldn’t when I was working for television or writing non-fiction. It was very therapeutic. But I wasn’t just a writer of books about figure skating. I was a reader, too. I learned so much from the experts, especially those willing to admit how things really were, rather than how the sport would like to appear on the surface.
The novelization of the 1978 movie (remade in 2010) is howlingly hilarious. The author has no understanding of how skating works - either competitively or, you know, physics. That’s what makes it such compelling reading. Also, in the movie, the characters tend to mumble. It helps to have read the book first to have a vague clue of what they’re saying.
As a writer of thrillers whose debut novel was considered Noir, I’ve always been fascinated by tales of characters that are not always the most likeable. Noir fiction is characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. Similar to its successful films, I love when you feel for an anti-hero. That despite their questionable motives, the author or director manages to make you root for them in the end.
Another Jim Thompson classic, The Grifters is about a trio of con artists trying to move up from being small-time crooks. They add love and a mother/son relationship into the mix which only makes things worse. The film directed by Stephen Frears is a master-class in acting from Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, and John Cusak. The scene at the end couldn’t be more shocking as a way to wrap up a noir film. Money is paramount in the world of the grifters, everything else secondary. What could be more noir than that?
Roy Dillon is young, good-looking and devastatingly charming. He's also a completely amoral con man. Lily, his mother, works for the mob. Moira Langtry, Roy's mistress, is always looking for the main chance, and so is Carol Roberg, the nurse brought in to look after Roy when a bad choice of mark means he has an unfortunate encounter with a baseball bat and a bad case of internal bleeding. Together they make up a perverse quadrangle of love and greed in a coruscating novel of corruption.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I have turned my childhood fascination with Hollywood into an academic career. For four decades I have explored, not least through extensive archival research, all aspects of the history of American cinema – films, filmmakers, studios, production histories, marketing campaigns, critical reception, audiences. Among other books, I have published three volumes in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series (on Buster Keaton’sThe Generaland Stanley Kubrick’sDr. Strangeloveand2001: A Space Odyssey). I have focused on some of the most highly acclaimed, most commercially successful, most ardently loved, and most influential movies of all time. The starting point for my work is always my passionate engagement with particular movies.
This lavishly illustrated large-format volume takes the reader from George Lucas’s childhood and early youth to his years at film school and his subsequent Hollywood career as a director, writer, and producer, with a particular emphasis on the production histories of his key films.
With unprecedented access to countless interviewees and archival materials, Hearn brings George Lucas and the making of his films to life.
Apart from telling compelling stories, he also reproduces a wide range of documents for the reader’s perusal so that the book may serve as an archive in its own right (and I have certainly used it precisely in this way in my own research).
Acclaimed filmmaker George Lucas reinvigorated the science-fiction genre more than 25 years ago with Star Wars, one of the greatest epics and cultural icons of its generation. He has enthralled audiences with his grand vision, mythic narratives, and groundbreaking visual effects ever since, and he remains a pivotal figure in American cinema: Star Wars: Episode II (2002) was the first film to be shot entirely with state-of-the-art digital cameras, and Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith is set for release on May 19, 2005. Marcus Hearn draws on exclusive interviews-as well as unprecedented access to the Lucasfilm archives-to…
I grew up in Taiwan and have always been fascinated by cinema. I received my Ph.D. in 1998 in the UK in communications studies and shifted my research priority from media to Taiwan cinema in 2005 when I became Head of Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. I had fun working on several projects, screening Taiwanese films, discussing Taiwan cinema and society with filmmakers and audiences, and publishing widely in Chinese and in English. I have travelled, lived, and worked in different cities and countries since 2005 and have continued to find it rewarding to study what I have been passionate about since childhood.
When I decided to study Taiwan cinema more systematically, I tried to read as much on the subject as possible. I enjoyed this book because it offered me a broad overview of many kinds of questions that can be asked about and through Taiwan cinema.
For example, I realized that it is possible to try and understand Taiwanese domestic & international politics, cross-strait relations, colonial history, and the impact of globalization in a more relatable manner by reading films and documentaries as texts. It is also possible to analyze different festivals, genres, filmmakers, and individual films from the perspectives of the film industry and film artistry.
I was totally energized by the enormous potential the subject of Taiwan cinema can offer because of this book.
Following the recent success of Taiwanese film directors, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Ang Lee and Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwanese film is raising its profile in contemporary cinema. This collection presents an exciting and ambitious foray into the cultural politics of contemporary Taiwan film that goes beyond the auterist mode, the nation-state argument and vestiges of the New Cinema.
Cinema Taiwan considers the complex problems of popularity, conflicts between transnational capital and local practice, non-fiction and independent filmmaking as emerging modes of address, and new possibilities of forging vibrant film cultures embedded in national (identity) politics, gender/sexuality and community activism.…
I was a romance reader long before becoming an author. 89 published books later, including 2 New York Times and 9 USA Today bestsellers, I feel justified in claiming some knowledge on the subject. I believe you must be a book lover, an avid reader, to be a successful writer.That said, everyone has diverse tastes, and I think taste and what a person needs in a book, changes with time and circumstances. Luckily there have never been more books available. You just have to find them. Whether you read my recommendations and said, “Yes!” or “Hell, no!”, I hope you're one step closer to your next best read.
I’ll admit that I picked up Tessa Bailey’s books strictly because of the reader raves all over TikTok. I read her It Happened One Summer first, and then immediately put Hook, Line, and Sinker on my wish list and I have to say, I loved the second book even more than the first, and that was a high bar to beat.
A riches-to-rags story about two sisters forced to move from their luxurious lives in LA to a much more sparce existence in a small fishing village populated with sexy crab fishermen, it’s part Schitt’s Creek and part Deadliest Catch—a testament to the fact this toe-tingling romance was conceived and written during the pandemic when the author was admittedly binging both shows on TV.
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES AND #1 USA TODAY BESTSELLER
In the follow-up to It Happened One Summer, Tessa Bailey delivers another deliciously fun rom-com about a former player who accidentally falls for his best friend while trying to help her land a different man...
King crab fisherman Fox Thornton has a reputation as a sexy, carefree flirt. Everyone knows he's a guaranteed good time-in bed and out-and that's exactly how he prefers it. Until he meets Hannah Bellinger. She's immune to his charm and looks, but she seems to enjoy his... personality And wants to be friends…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
As a massively dyslexic writer. I have always felt like I was standing outside a party I wasn’t invited to. Reading writers with diverse backgrounds and brain types from me but a common humanity makes me feel less alone. I grew up on the activist hippy side of the 60’s culture wars. I grew up poor. I went to a mostly white hippy grammar school. I went to a mostly Black inner-city high school. My oldest son is intellectually disabled. I have committed petty crimes, done drugs, been a drunk. I am one diverse mother-trucker. But then again, aren’t we all.
Marissa doesn’t label herself but seems to deal with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In her words, “The best way I can think to describe it is that there’s a beehive in my chest, and most people upset the bees. The nearer they get, the worse it is—and direct contact makes them swarm.” Marissa is more than a diagnosis. She is a film editor struggling to verbalize to producers her inner creative process. I was a film editor for many years and Little’s description of the creative process was spot on. Marissa is trapped on a movie set full of mayhem and murder. How she presents makes it hard for anyone to believe her when she discovers a killer amongst them. The book is a powerful statement on looking beyond how someone presents the truth they are speaking.
A Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, and CrimeReads Best Mystery Book of 2020
"Funny, fast-paced, and a pleasure to read." --The Wall Street Journal
An egomaniacal movie director, an isolated island, and a decades-old murder--the addictive new novel from the bestselling author of Dear Daughter
Marissa Dahl, an up-and-coming film editor with a flair for faux pas, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline.
Some girl dies.
It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever…
