Books like Radiant Angel — picked by fans

I’ve been a fan of Crais’s Elvis & Joe series for years, so I was delighted to see that he brought a dog into a new series as a main character. Another book with traumatized characters, this one demonstrates the redemptive power of canine love.

LAPD officer Scott James is recovering from an assault in which his partner was killed, and he almost lost his life. He’s barely fit to return to duty until he’s paired with his new partner Maggie, a bomb-sniffing German shepherd that lost her handler in Afghanistan. Their partnership offers healing for both, and I love this book and A Borrowing of Bones because they reflect redemption.

Even while pursuing the nastiest criminals Detective Lucas Davenport and his sardonic sense of humor make me laugh. A deranged man wants to punish the female psychiatrist who once put him in a mental hospital. When he kidnaps the woman and her two young daughters, Lucas focuses on who stands to benefit. The combative resentful husband she's divorcing, her business partner, and her elderly father's trophy wife who will inherit his fortune if his daughter dies. 

The kidnapper inflicts harsh punishment on the psychiatrist and plays mind games with Lucas. He telephones Lucas, taunts him and threatens to kill his captives. Lucas has no idea where they are, but he can play mind games too. An emotional roller-coaster ride until the last page of this gritty suspense thriller.

I love Boston Detective D.D. Warren. She may be a knockout blonde but she's no ditsy airhead. She's a smart, hard-nosed detective who takes no guff from anyone. But her current case is a complex puzzle. One night while her print journalist husband is away at work, a young mother disappears, leaving her four-year-old daughter home alone, fast asleep in bed. 

The husband stonewalls D.D.'s questions and won't let her question his daughter. The couple appears to lead a squeaky-clean life with their daughter, but both parents have dark secrets. D.D.'s investigation yields a plethora of suspects but damn few answers. Worse, D.D. believes the four-year-old saw whoever took her mother, putting her life in danger. Multiple bombshells and heart-wrenching revelations drive The Neighbor to a shocking conclusion.

Picture Jack Reacher on an NYC subway car at 2 AM with a suicide bomber. Will she blow up the car and everyone in it? I love how Lee Child keeps us in suspense, not just for a page or two, for twenty-seven pages! Reacher finds out the woman had a dangerous secret, but everyone he talks to lies to him. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger and more questions. 

But many people want Reacher to stop asking questions: a former Delta Force operative running for the US Senate, two Al Qaeda agents, NYC cops, and FBI agents. They want Reacher to get lost and forget the suicide bomber. Fat chance! The complex plot will intrigue you. The climactic ending will terrify you even more than the suicide bomber.

For those of us who lived through 9/11, it’s easy to forget that kids in school today weren’t even born in 2001; to them, the events of 9/11 are ancient history. I Survived is the kind of book that can jump-start their interest by dropping them right into the thick of the events of that day. Lucas is a football-obsessed teen who makes a series of completely relatable bad decisions that leave him right at Ground Zero just as the planes hit the towers. Told in age-appropriate but heart-stopping detail, this book captures a perfect snapshot of the confusion, fear, heroism, and resolve on display that extraordinary day. 

While I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, there was something in The Mouse that Roared that really spoke to me. The way that it takes an already absurd reality to an extreme really spoke to my own sensibilities and humor. History books tell the facts, but stories like this reflect how absurd the geopolitical culture must have felt to most people. It’s akin to Dr. Strangelove, not only in being a Cold War satire, but in the absurd and extreme nature of the farce. It influenced my own political satire heavily.

I am definitely recommending some very big books here! 

This one is easily recognizable because of the size of its spine, but it’s also incredibly interesting – an economic, social, and political history of New York City from its founding to consolidation, I think the best thing about this book is all the subjects it covers which I knew nothing about. 

New York City during the American Revolution comes to mind. So does the early history of New York’s apartment buildings. There’s a reason this book won a Pulitzer Prize. 

I like the sequel too (called Greater Gotham, only by Wallace), but prefer this book, I think, because I know the post-1898 history better while much of this book was novel to me.

This is a novel about Italian immigrants struggling to survive in New York City’s Little Italy during the early years of the twentieth century amid the growth of the Black Hand, the precursor to the American mafia. The book is unique in that most of the characters are the author’s actual ancestors and people with whom they had come into contact during that era. Similarly, the grisly central events described in the story all occurred.

It is beautifully written and filled with fascinating historical details. The characters and the descriptions of places and events come alive on the page. Fabiano includes an extensive Glossary of Italian Terms used in the book, as well as a multi-generational family tree. Elizabeth Street makes for very good reading!

I’ve read this book more than any book I’ve ever read. It’s what inspired me to not just want to be a writer but a sportswriter.

Telander does what all writers aspire to do: Turn a slice-of-life story—in this case, a group of Black kids from Brooklyn who love playground basketball—into a bigger lesson about human connection. He uses curiosity, an eye for details, and a sense of humor to make every character feel fully realized. 

If you want to understand the struggle Jews like me face in modern America, read this classic novel.

Two Jewish boys—one secular and the other expected to follow in his father’s footsteps as a Chasidic rabbi—grow up in 1940s Brooklyn against the backdrop of World War II and the founding of Israel. It shows the conflict we face between family expectations and assimilating in a country where we don’t feel fully welcome.