Here are 97 books that On Java Road fans have personally recommended if you like
On Java Road.
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As a kid, I was amazed to learn that roads ran from one end of the country to the other and that electrical and telecommunications cables circled the entire planet. Excess frightened me. The planet could be circled in a matter of hours in a swift-flying jet; how could it also contain so much stuff? I felt like I was missing something. The books on this list speak to all of us who have wondered about what we might be missing… and what we are unable to know. I hope they mean as much to you as they have to me!
Most of Found Audio takes the form of a transcribed interview with an “adventure journalist,” whose story—even without the book’s surrounding architecture—is riveting. He seems to have discovered something mind-bending about the nature of dreams. But this interview is being delivered to the reader by a writer named N.J. Campbell, who received it (on cassette tape) from an audio engineer, who in turn received the tapes from a shady stranger, who refused to say much about them. The book’s overlapping narratives and absence of any “central authority” create a mobius strip. I love fictions that follow the advice of the sculptor Robert Smithson: “Establish enigmas, not explanations.” And Found Audio may be Exhibit A.
* A Best Book of 2017 —Writer's Bone "[A] mysterious work of metafiction... dizzying, arresting and defiantly bold." —Laura Pearson, Chicago Tribune Amrapali Anna Singh is an historian and analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic and trivial details from audio recordings. One day, a mysterious man appears at her office in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, having traveled a great distance to bring her three Type IV audio cassettes that bear the stamp of a library in Buenos Aires that may or may not exist.
On the cassettes is the deposition of an adventure journalist and his obsessive pursuit of an…
This book is a spy novel with a satirical edge which will take you on a heart-pumping journey through the streets, mountains, jungles, and beaches of Colombia. Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.
I grew up on the ocean, surrounded by stories of pirates and mystery. Back then, I became enthralled with old detective series like Nancy Drew. Today, I am hooked on Agatha Christie. Though I primarily read and write nonfiction, they retain that mysterious element that has always intrigued me. In my teaching, writing, and research, I work with genealogy and true crime. I’m also obsessed with true crime books and podcasts. I hope you enjoy the list I have picked for you!
This is a classic true crime book and a must-read for any true crime fan. Renner investigates the 2004 disappearance of University of Massachusetts Amherst nursing student Maura Murray.
He weaves a narrative about his obsession with true crime and the quest to find Miss Murray. On his trail to the truth behind Miss Murray’s disappearance, Renner encounters many helpful and disturbing characters.
Told through his conversational writing style, Renner makes me and his readers feel as if we are all on this true crime journey together!
When an eleven year old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighbourhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession leads James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011, James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New Hampshire in 2004. Over the course of his investigation, he uncovers numerous important and shocking new clues about what may have happened to Maura, but…
I am the author of the DI Winter Meadows series. I love reading and writing crime fiction, especially books set in rural locations. I live in South Wales where I go hiking mountains, exploring caves, and discovering waterfalls. I take inspiration from these remote areas and close-knit communities to create the settings, characters, and plots for my books.
In 1963 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from her home. A man is convicted and hung for her murder. Her body is never found. 35 years later Catherine Heathcote is writing a book about the Carter investigation, but she is not prepared for what she is about to discover.
The story is atmospheric with well-drawn characters. The first half of the book follows the investigation in 1963 and gives you an insight into the family of the missing girl. I found myself fully immersed in the tight-knit community. Nothing is as it seems, and this is one book you won’t want to miss.
A riveting psychological thriller from the Number One bestselling Queen of crime fiction - Val McDermid.
In the Peak District village of Scardale, thirteen-year-old girls didn't just run away. So when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of '63, everyone knew it was a murder.
Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well. A child herself when Alison vanished, decades on she still recalls the sense of fear as parents kept their children close, terrified of strangers.
Now a journalist, she persuades DI George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison, the tantalizing leads and harrowing dead ends. But when a…
This book is a spy novel with a satirical edge which will take you on a heart-pumping journey through the streets, mountains, jungles, and beaches of Colombia. Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.
I’m the author of the critically acclaimed Geneva Chase Crime Reporter series. I live and write on a barrier island on the coast of North Carolina with my wife, Cindy, and Annie, our Shih-Tzu. I’ve had a long career working for newspapers and magazines, primarily in New England and New York, and I’m currently working on my next novel.
Mr. Belsky’s media background is in newspapers, magazines, and TV/digital news. Yesterday’s News is the first in his series featuring Clare Carlson, the hard-driving and tenacious news director for Channel 10 in New York City. When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history. The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight.
Now Clare once again plunges back into this sensational story. With new evidence, new victims, and new suspects—too many suspects. Everyone from members of a motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a US Senate seat seems to have secrets they’re hiding about what really might have happened to Lucy Devlin.
I love Mr. Belsky’s Clare Carlson series because they’re fast-paced and thought out and the protagonist is easy to identify with.
“Tell me what happened to my daughter?” For fifteen years this anguished plea has haunted reporter Clare Carlson
When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history.
The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight. Clare broke exclusive after exclusive. She had unprecedented access to the Devlin family as she wrote about the heartbreaking search for their young daughter. She later won a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case.
In addition to being an author, I’m an avid reader, averaging about a book a week. While I enjoy a good historical fiction or NYT bestseller, my go-to is mystery and suspense, and has been since the day my mother first introduced me to Nancy Drew. I’m especially drawn to cold case mysteries, multiple POVs, and complex plots and characters, but I can dive headfirst into a fast-paced beach read with equal pleasure. As a writer by profession, I truly believe reading is the best teacher and I have learned from, and enjoyed, every one of these recommendations immensely. It’s my hope that you'll discover a new-to-you author and love the book you choose.
As a former journalist and magazine editor, I’m all too familiar with the ongoing demise of print media, and so I found myself identifying with protagonist Kate Waters, a journalist fighting to keep her newspaper job by looking for the next big story. Kate thinks she may have found it after reading a short article in her evening newspaper: the discovery of the skeletal remains of a baby at a construction site.
Skillfully told from multiple POVs, this is as much a book about what could have been as what may—or may not—have happened, and Barton is undeniably equal to the task.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow comes a twisting novel of psychological suspense—as seen in People, Entertainment Weekly, Time, USA Today, Bustle, Good Housekeeping.com, HelloGiggles, The Boston Globe, PureWow, The Dallas Morning News, and more!
“The Child is a perfect blend of beach read and book club selection....[A] page-turning whodunit….A novel that is both fast-paced and thought-provoking.”—USA Today
As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers human remains, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper,…
My passion and expertise for writing Christian Military Romance stems from the fact that I was a military wife—twice. My first husband, an Army officer died eight years into our marriage. I then married a petty officer in the Navy—all this on top of growing up all over the world as my father worked in the foreign service. As someone who views the world through the lens of faith and who relies on God to overcome hardship, I'm convinced that the elite warriors who protect us and who fight giants on our behalf must also rely on faith. Tie all those elements together, and, voilá, you have a Rebecca Hartt Acts of Valor book!
I have to admit, I’m a tough sell when it comes to the genre I write. But Ms. Hannon is an excellent writer. She never “tells”; she “shows”. Her characters are motivated by their faith, just like I am. While Irene Hannon does not feature military heroes in her stories, her police detectives display the same level of discipline and willingness to take on danger.
She has done her research and portrays realistic investigations. Her heroine is a mature, complex individual—someone I would like to meet and befriend. And the romance that blossoms between Moira and Cal is natural and touching.
This is also a second-chance romance, which gets me every time. The only way it could be better would be to throw a kid into the story.
Reporter Moira Harrisons is lost. In the dark. In a thunderstorm. When a confusing detour places her on a rural, wooded road, she's startled by the sudden appearance of a lone figure caught in the beam of her headlights. Though Moira jams on her brakes, the car careens across the wet pavement--and the solid thump against the side of the vehicle tells her she hit the person before she crashes into a tree on the far side of the road.
A dazed Moira is relieved when a man opens her door, tells her he saw everything, and promises to call…
As a journalist and author and a young father, I’ve come to seek more vigorously things that make me smile, things I can cherish and appreciate. My most recent book is dedicated to “the troubled, in trouble, and once troubled.” In promoting the book, I’ve often said I still feel fairly troubled—which is true. Demons never die, we just live to learn with them. So while reading the below books I’ve discovered hallowed moments which fill a person to the brim. After each of these reads I felt that I could surmount most anything.
When I first moved overseas, I hadn’t thought about leaving my friends behind, or what role they played in my life. We had largely spent our lives apart, ever-connected if remote, and that seemed to fit us just fine. Then something akin to culture shock took hold and I needed them more than ever. They were there, in their Zoom boxes, and on telephone calls. I was reminded to check in with them often—to keep the good thing we had going.
In this "entertaining mix of social science, memoir, and humor, as if a Daniel Goleman book were filtered through the lens of Will Ferrell" (The New York Times Book Review) a middle-aged man embarks on an entertaining and relatable quest to reprioritize his ties with his buddies and forge new friendships, all while balancing work, marriage, and kids.
At the age of forty, having settled into his busy career and active family life, Billy Baker discovers that he's lost something crucial along the way: his friends. Other priorities always seemed to come first, until all his close friendships became distant…
I’ve spent my life as an avid reader, but I hadn’t seen my culture represented in many books, so I began writing the stories that I wished had existed on the shelves when I was younger. It took until my forties for my books to be published, and for me to start finding stories by other Indian authors like me, but better late than never! As someone who has lived in multiple countries and traveled to more than 70 others, I’m no stranger to writing about and searching for places that feel like home, and each of these books helped bring a piece of home to me.
There is so much wit and humor in this memoir that touches upon the immigrant experience from the perspective of the first-generation adult child. Deb goes on a journey to learn who his parents are as individuals and gains a perspective that is often difficult to achieve in the Indian community because parents don’t often share with their children who they are on the inside. The vulnerability with which Deb shares his childhood desire to blend into the white community in which he was raised was so relatable because I’d had a similar upbringing in another part of the country. This book made me laugh hard, think more deeply, and want to know my parents better.
A bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian.
Approaching his 30th birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history. Sure, Deb knew the facts: his parents, both Indian, separately immigrated to North America in the 1960s and 1970s. They were brought together in a…
I grew up in a small town, with wonderful librarians who introduced me to books I remember fondly to this day. The Flicka, Ricka, Dicka series, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, and, of course, Little Women shaped my love for stories about relationships and the simple pleasures of daily life. Whether it’s a mystery or a memoir, I want interesting interactions between the main characters, meaty descriptions of daily activities and affairs, and, of course, a happy ending. As I’ve gotten older, I like books with older protagonists; those are hard to come by—one reason I wrote a novel about the adventures of five middle-aged girlfriends!
Hard to imagine a memoir about suicide can be entertaining but, honestly, it was.
Sean Dietrich’s father shot himself when Sean was a child. The book is a roller-coaster ride of emotions Sean experiences as he comes to terms with that event. While the backdrop of the story is that sad beginning, the details of Sean’s life lived along the way are often funny.
His description of math and why he hates it is downright hilarious: “Math is one of those things the good Lord allowed on this earth to remind mankind that the devil is real,” that paragraph begins. Sean details his journey from being a high school dropout to becoming an award-winning, hugely popular author and columnist with brute honesty, a distinctly Southern perspective, and a wit that puts him right up there with Will Rogers.
From celebrated storyteller "Sean of the South" comes an unforgettable memoir of love, loss, the friction of family memories, and the unlikely hope that you're gonna be alright.
Sean Dietrich was twelve years old when he scattered his father's ashes from the mountain range. His father was a man who lived for baseball, a steel worker with a ready wink, who once scaled a fifty-foot tree just to hang a tire swing for his son. He was also the stranger who tried to kidnap and kill Sean's mother before pulling the trigger on himself. He was a childhood hero, now…
I served in Iraq as Governorate Co-ordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority, 2003-2004; and as advisor to the Commanding General of US Forces in Iraq from 2007-2010. I retain a deep love of the country and am a regular visitor. I teach about the Middle East and Global Affairs at Yale University.
What did the Iraq War look like from the perspective of Iraqis? In most accounts of the Iraq War, Iraqis only feature as terrorists or victims. This book explains how Iraqis felt about the invasion of the country; what relations were like between returning exiles and those who had remained in Iraq all along; and the hopes that Iraqis had for their country. It is really well written and engaging.
In 1979, journalist Zuhair al-Jezairy fled Iraq and certain death after openly criticising Saddam's regime. Twenty-five years later he is back, and cautiously celebrating the toppling of the hated Ba'ath Party.
As editor of a newspaper, he breaks the Oil for Food scandal, disclosing the names of Arab and Westerners who were involved. He then sets up a television company and travels all over Iraq, documenting the country's descent into sectarianism and hopeless violence, soon becoming a target himself.
Al-Jezairy's first-hand accounts of the looting of Baghdad, the destruction of government buildings, and indiscriminate bombings are a searing, personal and…
