Here are 91 books that Spider Bones fans have personally recommended if you like Spider Bones. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Andromeda Strain

Brian Kenneth Swain Author Of World Hunger

From my list on thrillers that highlight the benefits and risks of cutting-edge technology.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been an avid reader for my entire life, as well as someone trained extensively in technology (master’s degree in electrical engineering). About twenty years ago, I became seriously drawn to writing and, quite naturally, gravitated toward technology-centric stories. Reading technology-based stories (novels and short stories) as well as nonfiction scientific articles provides a perpetual source of new ideas. And keeping up with the latest domestic and international news keeps me apprised of all the ways technology affects the world, for better and for worse.   

Brian's book list on thrillers that highlight the benefits and risks of cutting-edge technology

Brian Kenneth Swain Why Brian loves this book

I really enjoyed this book firstly because of the complete plausibility of the scenario, an extraterrestrial pathogen that comes to earth about which we are powerless to do anything.

Crichton’s medical background is on solid display here, and it is intriguing to experience the author’s very first fiction effort, knowing, as we do, the many great stories to come in the ensuing years (Jurassic Park, etc.). I also very much enjoyed the idea of a group of talented people from a wide range of disciplines working together to tackle a challenge of immense importance. 

By Michael Crichton ,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked The Andromeda Strain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.
 
Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun,…


If you love Spider Bones...

Book cover of Last Patient of the Night

Last Patient of the Night by Gary Gerlacher,

Emergency physician AJ Docker is no stranger to violence, but the brutal torture and murder of an innocent, young patient demands a response.

Together with his policeman friend, and a police dog, he sets out on a quest for justice for his lost patient. Doc’s investigation leads him into the…

Book cover of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Gary Gerlacher Author Of Last Patient of the Night

From my list on thrillers featuring a medical professional.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing. 

Gary's book list on thrillers featuring a medical professional

Gary Gerlacher Why Gary loves this book

I never said medical professionals had to be heroes. Dr. Leng is a world-class villain who challenges Hannibal Lecter, and I love how this book shows the scope of destruction that can be created when science is used for evil purposes.

Dr. Leng is so evil you can’t wait to read what he does next while rooting for someone to stop him, and only someone as capable as Agent Pendergast can do so. This is the culmination of the battle, and I recommend reading all of the books in this series. 

By Douglas Preston , Lincoln Child ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Cabinet of Dr. Leng as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How can you stop a serial killer who has been dead for a hundred years? FBI Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast always wants to protect his protegee Constance Greene from harm. But, against all odds, Constance has found a way to travel back in time. Heading to New York City in the late 1800s, Constance returns to the century of her birth to embark on a dangerous quest: stopping the era's most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng, from bringing his nefarious plans to fruition. If Constance can stop Dr. Leng, she can finally prevent the events that led…


Book cover of Cell

Gary Gerlacher Author Of Last Patient of the Night

From my list on thrillers featuring a medical professional.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing. 

Gary's book list on thrillers featuring a medical professional

Gary Gerlacher Why Gary loves this book

I love this book because it features an ordinary radiology resident, Dr. George Wilson, who gets caught up in an international conspiracy. Stories that feature an ordinary person faced with extraordinary circumstances and overcoming them are always going to keep my attention.

This story takes me back to my medical school days and makes me wonder what I would have done if I had been faced with a similar situation. Any Robin Cook story is a winner, but this is my favorite by far. 

By Robin Cook ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A doctor's life gets turned upside by a dangerous new technology in this thought-provoking medical thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robin Cook.

George Wilson, M.D., a radiology resident in Los Angeles, is about to enter a profession on the brink of an enormous paradigm shift, foreshadowing a vastly different role for doctors everywhere. The smartphone is poised to take on a new role in medicine, no longer as a mere medical app but rather as a fully customizable personal physician capable of diagnosing and treating even better than the real thing. It is called iDoc.

George’s initial…


If you love Kathy Reichs...

Book cover of Doctor Lucifer

Doctor Lucifer by Anthony Lee,

Dr. Mark Lin, a cynical and disillusioned internist, is the target of a hacker known as Doctor Lucifer. Three patients at Ivory Memorial Hospital suffer from medication errors, created by the hacker, yet Mark is forced to take the blame. He knows a computer worm is spreading and crippling network…

Book cover of Harvest

Gary Gerlacher Author Of Last Patient of the Night

From my list on thrillers featuring a medical professional.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing. 

Gary's book list on thrillers featuring a medical professional

Gary Gerlacher Why Gary loves this book

This is another story that takes me back to my medical training days. A young member of the surgical team makes an impulsive decision that leads to an ethical dilemma and a web of deception.

This story is not only a thriller but addresses important issues related to the ethics of the transplant system. It’s a great read to get a look at the inner workings of the medical system. 

By Tess Gerritsen ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Harvest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Suspense as sharp as a scalpel's edge. A page-turning, hold-your-breath read'
Tami Hoag

HEART-STOPPING TERROR

Dr Abby Di Matteo has made the best - and the worst - decision of her career. Instead of giving a donor heart to the wealthy patient it's been reserved for, she uses it to save a dying boy's life.

Luckily, a new heart appears that's perfectly suited to the original patient, and the furore dies down. But then Abby discovers that the organ has been obtained illegally. Defying the hospital's commands, she starts her own investigation...

And uncovers a murderous conspiracy that will threaten…


Book cover of A Test of Wills

Ann Hood Author Of The Stolen Child

From my list on WWI love stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a romantic who believes in love and loves poetry, yet is also fascinated by WWI. I remember watching the movie All Quiet on the Western Front on television with my grandmother on a Saturday afternoon and being completely mesmerized. Over the years since then, I’ve even traveled to Sarajevo, where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set the war in motion, and to Gallipoli in Turkey, where a disastrous trench battle took place for almost a year. When I read about WWI Trench Art–art made by the soldiers awaiting battle in the trenches–my fiction writer's imagination was struck by the idea for my book below.

Ann's book list on WWI love stories

Ann Hood Why Ann loves this book

I love a good detective series. I love even more a good detective series that takes place in the UK and has at its center a flawed detective. Set the series in or around WWI, and that’s about as perfect as it can get for me.

This is the first of twenty-four Ian Rutledge mysteries, so it started me on many hours of happy reading. Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is shell-shocked from WWI. His wife Jean leaves him when he returns from the war after five years, and Rutledge is lonely and barely holding on when he is put on a murder case where a war hero is the chief suspect. Although Rutledge doesn’t have a love interest in this first book in the series, his broken heart makes him even more fragile and has me rooting for him even more.

As the books progress, I watched him…

By Charles Todd ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Test of Wills as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Inspector Rutledge left a brilliant career in Scotland Yard to fight in the Great War. It is now 1919, shell shocked and trying to salvage his sanity and fight off the colleagues jealous of his prewar successes he is drawn into the investigation of the murdered Colonel Harris, in a small Warwickshire village. A debut novel.


Book cover of Evidence of Things Unseen

Tara Lynn Masih Author Of The Silent Women

From my list on fiction and poetry books that navigate the atomic age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a bicultural writer. As a result, I often see things from both sides. While researching my novel on the Manhattan Project, mostly set in Oak Ridge, TN, I became fascinated by the yin-and-yang attitude of the Project’s workers, scientists, and family members. It’s the most complex history I’ve had the privilege of studying. How can something be so awful and so astonishing? Reading these books cemented my belief that both sides of the coin can and do exist when we judge the building and use of the first atomic bomb. All these writers offer important contributions to atomic literature, and I hope you learn from and enjoy these books as much as I do!

Tara's book list on fiction and poetry books that navigate the atomic age

Tara Lynn Masih Why Tara loves this book

I discovered Marianne Wiggins through this stellar novel, which was a National Book Award Finalist.

It’s an epic love story spanning many decades and two wars, and what I especially appreciated was Wiggins’ ability to weave in both the beauty and physics of light, the science of electricity and radiation.

These elements are present when the story begins, and when the story leaves Oak Ridge, where the uranium was enriched, the atomic bomb and fallout continue to follow the couple’s son, aptly named Lightfoot. I felt like I became Lightfoot, navigating my own views and understanding of the atomic age and its moral complexities.

By Marianne Wiggins ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Evidence of Things Unseen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This poetic historical novel, set between the world wars, tells the story of an American couple and their adopted son, Lightfoot. Fos, a chemist intrigued with constellations, bioluminescence and x-rays, returns from the war in France and falls in love with Opal, the daughter of a glassblower on the Outer Banks of N.C. They move to Knoxville, where Fos and an army buddy have a photography studio, and travel to summer fairs with Fos's x-ray machine. When Opal inherits a farm on the Clinch River, they move again, and live happily with Lightfoot, who had been abandoned, until the property…


If you love Spider Bones...

Book cover of Toxic Minds

Toxic Minds by Anthony Lee,

One of Dr. Mark Lin's patients is killed by a suicide bomber blowing up a clinic. Everyone points the finger at anti-abortion extremists. Mark, however, has a different theory about the culprit: a secretive healing cult called the Path to Purity.

The only way to avenge his patient is to…

Book cover of Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Amanda Cockrell Author Of Coyote Weather

From my list on the Sixties and the Vietnam War era.

Why am I passionate about this?

Almost all of my books have been historical novels, but this one is the one most dear to me, an attempt to understand the fault line that the Vietnam War laid across American society, leaving almost every man of my generation with scars physical or psychic. My picks are all books that illuminate the multiple upheavals of that time.

Amanda's book list on the Sixties and the Vietnam War era

Amanda Cockrell Why Amanda loves this book

Winter Soldiers offers firsthand accounts of more than thirty of members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, some of whom first joined the military with a deep belief in the rightness of America’s role in that conflict.

Eventually they made common cause with the protesters against the war and their voices had a role in its ending. Winter Soldiers follows them from their lives before the war, through their service, and into its aftermath.

By Richard Stacewicz ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Winter Soldiers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1971, Vietnam veterans testified in public hearings about atrocities they had participated in or witnessed during the war. Here, Stacewicz seeks to tell their story by interviewing more than 30 members of Vietnam Veterans Against War and draws on their archives for supporting evidence.


Book cover of The Things They Carried

Ellis Scott Author Of Night Terminus

From my list on literary fiction about catastrophe and memory.

Why am I passionate about this?

Writing is about the metaphysical as well as the rational if it’s any good. As an author, I am always more interested in the wreckage of a crisis than the crisis itself—in the aftermath. Survivors search for purpose above all else. They undertake long sojourns, seek spiritual counsel, or find solace in art or politics. As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path that is shared by all these novels is the discovery of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. There lies meaning.

Ellis' book list on literary fiction about catastrophe and memory

Ellis Scott Why Ellis loves this book

Vietnam was a war complicated by political lies, class antagonism, and generational trauma.

The author seamlessly blends non-fiction with fiction, creating verisimilitude which references memoir without always being bound by the weight of facts, freeing the narrative. The horrors and hollowness of war are recounted through intimate encounters, unrequited loves, and imagined lives. In doing so, he keeps alive the friends and lovers who have died.

I found a catharsis in the clarity and coolness of his internal voice, which needs no embellishment to deliver its emotional blow. In writing about the everyday violence both during and after the conflict, he reminds us of the importance of love and morality.

By Tim O'Brien ,

Why should I read it?

25 authors picked The Things They Carried as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

The million-copy bestseller, which is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

'The Things They Carried' is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has the cumulative power and unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme.

But while Vietnam is central to 'The Things They Carried', it is not simply a book about war. It is also a book about the human heart - about the terrible weight of those things we…


Book cover of No Ordinary Dog

David Alton Hedges Author Of Werewolf

From my list on books that prove animals are scary smart.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a former police officer who couldn’t find any use for his English lit degree until he lived as hard as he could for decades and found something worth writing about. My years with K9 Brag—the greatest, smartest animal I have known—became the key that unlocked my writing. Now I write screenplays, comics, historical fiction, crime stories, and even horror shorts. I am currently working on a novel trilogy about one of the most famous outlaws in history.

My stories almost always have an animal that lies at the emotional heart of the tale.

David's book list on books that prove animals are scary smart

David Alton Hedges Why David loves this book

A book close to my heart because it is an account of a Navy SEAL K9 handler and his partner.

I had a difficult time reading certain parts because I found myself so worried about K9 Cairo that I could hardly stand to read on. But when the author reconnects with Cairo after their military careers end—both of them permanently affected by their experiences—the book became therapy for me.

It’s a keeper.

By Will Chesney , Joe Layden ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Ordinary Dog as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

No Ordinary Dog is the powerful true story of a SEAL Team Operator and military dog handler, and the dog that saved his life.

Two dozen Navy SEALs descended on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011. After the mission, only one name was made public: Cairo, a Belgian Malinois and military working dog. This is Cairo's story, and that of his handler, Will Chesney, a SEAL Team Operator whose life would be irrevocably tied to Cairo's.

Starting in 2008, when Will was introduced to the SEAL canine program, he and Cairo worked side by side,…


Book cover of Battle Scars: A Story of War and All That Follows

Joe Talon Author Of Counting Crows

From my list on spooky minds and old soldiers who never give up.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve written about war for years. To be honest, it all began in school when we studied the terrible events of The Great War. Hearing the hearts shatter of men on the frontline never left me. I wanted to understand. I needed to understand. PTSD is something I’m familiar with, even if I’ve never been on the front line in battle. I’m also obsessed with myths, legends, ghost stories, and mysteries. My Lorne Turner series combines my passions and the books shine a light, in fiction, on what happens to old soldiers when they come home.

Joe's book list on spooky minds and old soldiers who never give up

Joe Talon Why Joe loves this book

Another story about a mind broken by war. Jason Fox is former Special Forces, and it shows. Exploring the effects of war on the mind of a soldier who is trained to abhor weakness in all its forms is deeply moving. Also, reading about man’s life descending into chaos when it’s been so ordered is tough. The effect on family and friends, work colleagues. Again, not an easy read, because this is real life folks, but well worth the effort. It’s also very interesting to read about the conflicts from a warrior’s point of view.

By Jason Fox ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Battle Scars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

___________

THE EXTRAORDINARY NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER.

'The most important book you'll ever read... Battle Scars will save lives.' TOM MARCUS, author of SOLDIER SPY

Battle Scars tells the story of Jason Fox's career as an elite operator, from the gunfights, hostage rescues, daring escapes and heroic endeavours that defined his service, to a very different kind of battle that awaited him at home.

After more than two decades of active duty, Foxy was diagnosed with complex PTSD, forcing him to leave the military brotherhood and confront the hard reality of what follows. What happens when you become your own enemy?…


Book cover of The Andromeda Strain
Book cover of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng
Book cover of Cell

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