Here are 100 books that Stray Bullets fans have personally recommended if you like
Stray Bullets.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!
When a street brawl abroad turns deadly, Danny Maik faces a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim's murder, he is looking at the death penalty. His only hope is reaching out to those he can trust back in the UK.
In Norfolk, Maik's replacement is trying to resurrect his career after a catastrophic error caused injury to a fellow officer. DCI Jejeune should be monitoring his new charge's progress closely, but he is distracted by Danny's plight. Others are watching, though, and they are disturbed by what they're seeing.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!
I was enthralled by Inspector Ashwin Chopra’s inheritance of a baby elephant and the role this plays in the fascinating story.
I was intrigued by Chopra’s investigation into the death of a boy, which he pursued despite having recently retired and facing opposition from his successor.
Vaseem Khan describes Mumbai's sights, smells, and sounds with such richness that the book made me feel as if I were alongside Chopra both in the city and in his home.
Mumbai, murder and a baby elephant combine in a charming, joyful mystery for fans of Alexander McCall Smith and Rachel Joyce.
On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries.
The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved.
And the second is a baby elephant.
As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both…
I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!
I loved the humor and the fast-moving story–much of it told through zany dialogue.
I especially enjoyed the quirky character of Angus McLintock, who is a lot of fun.
I liked the uniqueness of the setting. While the plot doesn’t unfold in an exotic country (Canada!), some of the attention is on the (fictitious) Champlain Centre, which Angus describes as an ‘arachnoid abomination.’
From bestselling author Terry Fallis comes the long-awaited follow-up to The Best Laid Plans and The High Roa d—a comic spy story that heralds the return of Angus Mclintock. Angus McClintock, accidental Member of Parliament, has won re-election and is now the Minister of State for International Relations—or, in other words, he's the junior global affairs minister. In this new post, he and his trusty Chief of Staff, Daniel Addison, are in London to meet with their international counterparts to discuss the upcoming G8 Summit in Washington. Unfortunately, Angus is not in charge of Canada's involvement in the summit—that task…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!
I loved the creativity and intensity of this mystery, which features Margaret Harness and Arthur Conan Doyle.
I was captivated by the setting of London, UK, in 1888–the time of the Whitechapel murders (Jack the Ripper). Harper brings fascinating characters to life and paints a vivid scene of abject poverty.
I was enthralled by this piece of historical fiction and loved Harper’s ingenuity in casting Arthur Conan Doyle as a detective, much like his creation, Sherlock Holmes.
Winner of Killer Nashville's 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Mystery and Edgar Finalist for Best First Novel, its audiobook won Audiofile Magazine's Earphone Award for Mystery and Suspense. Recently named as a "Recommended Read" by the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate.
This debut novel is the first in a series starring the real-life author and suffragette Margaret Harkness, continued in Queen's Gambit.
"Ardent feminism and cerebral detection face down the Ripper in the fog-shrouded streets of London: a feast for lovers of historical crime!"
--Laurie R. King, author of The Beekeeper's Apprentice and Island of the Mad
I was inspired by teachers and books starting at a very early age, and even before I was ten, I knew that I wanted to become a teacher and writer. In pursuing these two passions, I set out to become the best that I could be. I read countless books on the art and craft of writing (many of them by acclaimed authors). I chose these five exceptional books in the order that I read them over years of researching/writing La Brigantessa, which ultimately won an international Gold IPPY award for Historical Fiction, and was a finalist in two national literary awards. Hope you, too, are inspired by my picks!
Barbara Kyle covers all the areas fiction writers want and need to know about the craft of writing and how to elevate your craft into art. Her book is an essential guide to creating a novel with strong and compelling characters, setting, plot, dialogue, and more.
Her insightful suggestions and advice, initially through a manuscript evaluation of my book, and later with a thorough reading of this book, was an essential part of my writing journey towards creating a “page-turner” that led to the acceptance and publication of my novel.
"Brings alive almost every tough issue a writer of fiction must confront . . . friendly and fun to read." — Albert Zuckerman, founder of Writers House literary agency
“Kyle knows her stuff. She breaks down both the art and the craft of writing in a way that is entertaining and easy to understand.” — #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong
ABOUT THE BOOK
What makes a page-turner? What mysterious literary essence holds a reader so hard they feel they must keep reading? And then tell friends, "I couldn't put it down!"
For thirty-five years I spent my life in boardrooms, financing motion pictures with major Hollywood studios and learning the inside-out of law firms. I’ve also had a love for mysteries where I have to guess what’s going to happen next. My favorite authors keep me in suspense and stay a step ahead of me to the very end. I began my career as an author seven years ago. I added my own dose of modernized Shakespearean stories and the twists, turns, and suspense of life at the highest echelons of corporate America. I don’t aim to shock, but I do aim to surprise and keep you turning the pages. Obsessively.
This is the first of his seven novels all based in Toronto, which introduces a cast of characters who wind their way through the justice system: prosecutors, defense attorneys, politicians, detectives, police, and judges in a series which not only tracks a murderer, but provides an insight into issues that have become so problematic in society, whether it’s homelessness, schizophrenia, holocaust survival, or other current social issues.
There is a twist behind every turn and if you enjoy police procedurals this has been written by the ultimate insider, a Toronto practicing criminal lawyer who has seen it all and has a gift for story-telling.
'Robert Rotenberg does for Toronto what Ian Rankin does for Edinburgh' Jeffery Deaver
A talk-show host confesses to the brutal murder of his young wife.
The evidence is cast iron.
But when a determined detective, an ambitious rookie prosecutor and a defence lawyer keen to make her mark piece together the details of the case, nothing fits.
An intricately plotted web of lies, half-truths and hidden motives emerges - along with a secret no one could have suspected.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.
This book dovetails with those of Kitnick as well as Sharma and Singh. While framed by a broader concern with the emergence of the Toronto School of Communication, it gives particular attention to how McLuhan’s notions about “information art,” came to influence artistic practice through initiatives such as “N.E. Thing and Company” (NETCO), Robert Smithson’s West Coast work and “General Idea.” Echoing some of the issues raised by the Sharma/Singh collection, he examines these ventures through the lens of power and gender. It is impeccably edited and handsomely illustrated, in line with the high production standards of McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Through a series of focused and interconnected case studies, Out of School explores the long history of information art associated with the Toronto School of Communication. It highlights the perspectives of artists inspired by the speculations of Marshall McLuhan and colleagues as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Toronto School's ideas about information.
Using pre-Internet media such as telex and the telecopier, the artists explored in this book materialized visionary concepts of information without the aid of computers. Harbingers of contemporary digital culture, Bertram Brooker, N.E. Thing Co., Robert Smithson, Wyndham Lewis, General Idea, and other artists approached information…
I am an aficionado of lost objects, lost time, afterlives; of writing which never “fitted” its era. Examples would be that of John Aubrey, Herman Melville, Fernando Pessoa, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ralph Ellison… the list goes on. I look for writing that has stood the test of time, not celebrated for the fame and bling of the moment. I look for the futile products of those who possessed genius, but who never earned enough readers until decades or centuries later, once they were released from the prison-house of genre. I look for the posthumous brilliance of language; the phosphoric glow of its offerings and of the buried treasures found therein.
I just love the way she is so contemptuous of people telling false “stories”. Her writing falls between every genre imaginable, a collage of well-researched facts and the indelible list of the horrors of war. She makes lists as monuments to dead victims; she names names; she calls out nationalism and racism. Wry and ironic, she has composed a battle-hymn against the barbarity of the Yugoslav wars between 1991 and 2001. To my lasting regret, I missed meeting her in Melbourne not long before she died.
Tea Radan, the narrator of the novel Canzone di Guerra, reflects on her own past and in doing so, composes a forgotten mosaic of historical events that she wants to first tear apart and then reassemble with all the missing fragments. In front of the readers eyes, a collage of different genres takes place - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes. With them, the author Dasa Drndic skillfully explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration, the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasizing the absurdity of politics of differences between neighboring nations. The narrator…
I’m a Canadian writer who started writing fiction after a career as a journalist at newspapers across the country. I’ve always marvelled at the diversity of Canada, and I try to portray that diversity in my own stories set in Toronto, one of the world’s most multicultural cities. And I revel in stories by fellow Canadian crime writers, tales filled with First Nations characters, and characters with Ukrainian, Russian, Asian, African, and British backgrounds, stories set in various parts of our far-flung country. The five novels I have focused on here are just a few of my favorites.
The Water Rat of Wanchai is the first book in the Ava Lee crime thriller series. Tough, fearless Ava is a forensic accountant who travels to exotic locales (all well-known to author Ian Hamilton) chasing bad debts. The settings aren’t Canadian, but Ava is: she immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong as a child, and grew up in Richmond Hill, outside Toronto. Her current home is in Toronto’s trendy Yorkville neighborhood, but she has strong business ties to Asia. In many ways, she’s a typical Canadian—raised and educated in Canada, with ties to another part of the world, and fluent in a language other than Canada’s two official languages, English and French. All 15 Ava Lee books deliver on two fronts: they are crime thrillers and delightful armchair travel.
Meet Ava Lee — the smartest, most stylish heroine in crime fiction since Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salandar — in the first installment of the wildly popular Ava Lee novels.
Ava Lee is a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant, who specializes in recovering massive debts and works for an elderly Hong Kong–based “Uncle,” who may or may not have ties to the triads. At 115 lbs., she hardly seems a threat. But her razor-sharp intelligence and unorthodox rules of engagements allow her to succeed where traditional methods have failed.
In The Water Rat of Wanchai Ava is persuaded to help an old…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Middle grade always takes a big portion of my TBR pile. I love the hopefulness that kids this age have. And for a child reader, a book can be a way to work out big emotions in a place far removed from their own life. I love the function of a portal in taking the reader that much further away from their reality. As a child, the fantasy A Wrinkle in Time got me through a difficult period. This love of fantasy and children’s literature is the reason I started writing in the first place. And why I got an MFA in writing specifically for children and young adults.
I read the Canadian printing of this book, but hopefully the publishers won’t be changing too much for the American printing.
Like the heroine in The Wizard of Oz (and I’m assuming the title is a nod to that classic line, “There’s no place like home.”), Lan is whisked away by a mysterious wind, but I really like the fact that she discovers she has called for the wind herself. I also love that the wind takes her into the novel she’s reading (I’m sure you can see a theme here with one of my other picks!) and that she can then change the story’s outcome.
Sweeping in scope and timeless in tone, No Place like Home is a middle-grade portal fantasy unlike any other
Lan, a teenager who recently came to Canada from Vietnam, spends every day searching for a sense of belonging. Books are the only things that make her feel at ease. But it comes as a shock when a mysterious wind whisks her right into the pages of her latest fantasy read. More shocking still is the fact that she herself summoned this wind!
Plunged into the magical world of Silva, Lan realizes she has much to offer protagonists Annabelle and Marlow.…
