Here are 69 books that Success Secrets of the Motivational Superstars fans have personally recommended if you like Success Secrets of the Motivational Superstars. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Little Prince

Sally Dukes Author Of Drummer Girl

From my list on pilgrimages of the soul.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love stories about “pilgrimage.” I have always been an admirer of those characters who search, whether in fiction or nonfiction. I respect their steadfast endurance to undertake a calling, meet unforeseen obstacles, and overcome insurmountable circumstances, while never allowing the burning flame that drives them to extinguish. 

My own memoir, Drummer Girl, is the story of my pilgrimage. I have the distinct memory of traveling through a dark tunnel toward a clear light during surgery as a child. This experience of near death has since driven me to seek understanding, to look for words when there were none, and to find solace through life’s many turns.

Sally's book list on pilgrimages of the soul

Sally Dukes Why Sally loves this book

This is a lovely book with a clear message.

I often give it as a gift to those of all ages. My favorite line is “Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The story of the little prince poignantly reminds us that on the path to self-discovery, we must stay open to the question, look beyond what is visible, and remain inquisitive; in other words, we must remember to live in the mystery. This is a great message for adults and children alike.

The Little Prince is a timeless tale and a classic metaphorical story about the pilgrimage to find one’s true self. 

By Antoine de Saint-Exupery , Richard Howard (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Little Prince as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as 'The Little Prince'. Richard Howard's new translation of the beloved classic-published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's birth-beautifully reflects Saint-Exupery's unique and gifted style. Howard, an acclaimed poet and one of the preeminent translators of our time, has excelled in bringing the English text as close as possible to the French, in language, style, and most important, spirit. The artwork in this new edition has been restored to match in detail and in colour Saint-Exupery's original artwork. By combining the new…


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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

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…

Book cover of Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul

Samuel J. Alibrando Author Of Nature Never Stops Talking: The Wonderful Ingenuity of Nature

From my list on that have changed my thinking permanently.

Why am I passionate about this?

My books are non-fiction. However, the best stories are always how a character really changes. These books brought permanent change to me. One important value I see evaporating in this world is the ability to ask honest questions and the courage to willingly follow the evidence. I try to give readers a fresh and inspiring look at things like never before. Similarly, with every book recommendation, each author brought me a new perspective and added unexpected formats for learning. My advice is if you want to specialize in something, pursue diversified learning to maintain solid footing instead of specializing yourself into some specialized niche. Never lose your curiosity. 

Samuel's book list on that have changed my thinking permanently

Samuel J. Alibrando Why Samuel loves this book

I would recommend several of McManus’ books in my top five but that would narrow explaining what influences me.

In Uprising, we see the overlap of our need to achieve, our need for meaning, and God’s answers laid out in philosophical terms so we can see how maybe God isn’t so religious but tremendously right on, for our benefit. I underline sentences in books so I can quickly reference them at a later time.

I measure the personal value of a book by how many times I mark my book that way. This book has underlines, stars in the margin, comments above and below, and in different ink colors. It is packed with so many quotable nuggets of wisdom.

By Erwin Raphael McManus ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Warning: This book may not be for you!

This book is dangerous!

It is only for those who are ready to join an uprising?a revolution of the soul that will change an ordinary life into an extraordinary one. It is only for those who want something more out of life, who desire to tap into the divine potential that was placed in them at their creation.

You were in God's imagination before you were ever born. All the talent, gifting, and creativity you possess was placed in you by God Himself. Can you imagine the things you could do, the…


Book cover of Handbook on Population

Samuel J. Alibrando Author Of Nature Never Stops Talking: The Wonderful Ingenuity of Nature

From my list on that have changed my thinking permanently.

Why am I passionate about this?

My books are non-fiction. However, the best stories are always how a character really changes. These books brought permanent change to me. One important value I see evaporating in this world is the ability to ask honest questions and the courage to willingly follow the evidence. I try to give readers a fresh and inspiring look at things like never before. Similarly, with every book recommendation, each author brought me a new perspective and added unexpected formats for learning. My advice is if you want to specialize in something, pursue diversified learning to maintain solid footing instead of specializing yourself into some specialized niche. Never lose your curiosity. 

Samuel's book list on that have changed my thinking permanently

Samuel J. Alibrando Why Samuel loves this book

I came across this, now out of print, booklet as a 19-year-old who could not believe the majority of the planet would believe something incorrect. This guy was a lone voice against the tide of overpopulation panic. 

The information he provided was easily confirmed with math or encyclopedia references. It is completely a Q&A format. Very strange, at first. It was as if he expected me, the reader, to reach my own conclusions based on the information alone. That was new for me. He did not coax me or summarize his conclusion. This influenced my writing style for life. It respects the reader as having a mind of his own.

The 2nd most impacting part about this was ultimately, that yes, the whole world could literally be wrong. Shocking!

By Robert L Sassone ,

Why should I read it?

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


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Book cover of Retrieving the Future

Retrieving the Future by Randy C. Dockens,

Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.

Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…

Book cover of The Book That Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible to Change Any Country

Samuel J. Alibrando Author Of Nature Never Stops Talking: The Wonderful Ingenuity of Nature

From my list on that have changed my thinking permanently.

Why am I passionate about this?

My books are non-fiction. However, the best stories are always how a character really changes. These books brought permanent change to me. One important value I see evaporating in this world is the ability to ask honest questions and the courage to willingly follow the evidence. I try to give readers a fresh and inspiring look at things like never before. Similarly, with every book recommendation, each author brought me a new perspective and added unexpected formats for learning. My advice is if you want to specialize in something, pursue diversified learning to maintain solid footing instead of specializing yourself into some specialized niche. Never lose your curiosity. 

Samuel's book list on that have changed my thinking permanently

Samuel J. Alibrando Why Samuel loves this book

I have stereo-typed Christian influence throughout history as mostly religious and for changing people’s eternal destiny.

My attitude has always been respectful but these historical accounts raised my eyebrows not only about how much one man can lift a nation without being a political leader, but it also made me reconsider what the Bible itself was commanding for “disciple the nations”.

It covers multiple men and multiple countries: India, China, Ireland, South Korea, Switzerland, and more. Uplifting to me, except the part about how much more they did than I ever will. Still incredibly inspiring.

By Loren Cunningham , Janice Rogers ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Book That Transforms Nations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No country is too hard, too poor, too filled with crime, too divided by war, or too spiritually dark to be changed. God has given us basic principles that are keys to every problem we face in the twenty-first century. The answers lie between the covers of one book the Bible.

In The Book That Transforms Nations, missionary statesman Loren Cunningham demonstrates how, together, we can use the Bible, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, to change the whole world. In more than fifty years of continual travel, Loren's ministry has taken him to some of the world's poorest…


Book cover of Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California

Tom Bissell Author Of The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

From my list on trying to understand your parents.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a journalist, fiction writer, and screenwriter, as well as the author of ten books, the most recent of which is Creative Types and Other Stories, which will be published later this year. Along with Neil Cross, I developed for television The Mosquito Coast, based on Paul Theroux’s novel, which is now showing on Apple TV. Currently, I live with my family in Los Angeles.

Tom's book list on trying to understand your parents

Tom Bissell Why Tom loves this book

This is a memoir about being a writer—and failing. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappreciated (Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby), and notorious (Warren Zevon, Michael Cimino), while always circling back to his own benighted Hollywood upbringing, complete with a lovely tribute to his mother, a failed screenwriter. This is an angry, sad, but always somehow joyful book about not hitting it big, and I've never read anything quite like it.

By Matthew Specktor ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Always Crashing in the Same Car as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Best Book of the Year at The Atlantic

Los Angeles Times Bestseller

"[An] absorbing and revealing book. . . . nestling in the fruitful terrain between memoir and criticism." ―Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage

Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment.

In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood…


Book cover of The Secret Life of Anna Blanc

Fedora Amis Author Of Have Your Ticket Punched by Frank James

From my list on that bring a touch of humor to the Old West.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love history and I love to laugh. That’s why I brand myself as a writer of Victorian Whodunits with a touch of humor. I’ve spent decades learning about 1800s America. I began sharing that knowledge by performing in costume as real women of history. But I couldn’t be on stage all the time so I began writing the books I want to read, books that entertain while sticking to the basic facts of history and giving the flavor of an earlier time. I seek that great marriage of words that brings readers to a new understanding. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” 

Fedora's book list on that bring a touch of humor to the Old West

Fedora Amis Why Fedora loves this book

This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.

By Jennifer Kincheloe ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Secret Life of Anna Blanc as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise them behind covers of more domestically-appropriate reading. She could match wits with Sherlock Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals. 

Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles, Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department. There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate. Seizing her…


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Book cover of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

What Walks This Way by Sharman Apt Russell,

Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…

Book cover of Covenant

Brandon McNulty Author Of Bad Parts

From my list on small town horror.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up as a kid, I was obsessed with R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books, most of which took place in small-town settings. Horror could hide anywhere in those towns, whether out in the woods or on the shelf at the local general store. I loved those books to death because they taught me (or perhaps reminded me) that darkness existed within daily life. As I grew older, my passion for the subgenre led me to consume more stories and eventually write my own.

Brandon's book list on small town horror

Brandon McNulty Why Brandon loves this book

This Stoker Award-winner nearly caused me to miss a connecting flight to Los Angeles. I started reading it in an airport restaurant and got completely swept away until the final boarding call. In Covenant, a big-city journalist visits a small Midwest town to investigate a series of mysterious suicides. What unfolds is a gripping supernatural tale filled with mysterious characters, riveting conflict, and unthinkable twists.

By John Everson ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In a small town with a strange history of teen suicides, a group of five women have made a pact with a demon and must sacrifice their firstborn.

To the residents of the sleepy coastal town of Terrel, the cliffs of Terrel's Peak are a deadly place, an evil place where terrible things happen. Like a series of mysterious teen suicides over the years, all on the same date. Or other deaths, usually reported as accidents. Could it be a coincidence? Or is there more to it? Reporter Joe Kieran is determined to find the truth.

Kieran's search will lead…


Book cover of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Maxim Samson Author Of Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World

From my list on redefining your understanding of geography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Geography professor at DePaul University with a long-standing obsession with the world, comparing puddle shapes to countries as a small child and subsequently initiating map and flag collections that I cultivate to this day. Having lived in different parts of the UK and the USA, as well as being fortunate enough to travel further afield, I’ve relished the opportunity to explore widely and chat with the people who know their places best. I love books that alter how I look at the planet, and I am particularly intrigued by the subtle ways in which people have shaped our world—and our perceptions of it—both intentionally and inadvertently.

Maxim's book list on redefining your understanding of geography

Maxim Samson Why Maxim loves this book

A film noir in book form, Davis’ astute, visceral, and impassioned chronicle of Los Angeles at the turn of the millennium offers a dystopian view of future urban society.

I was recommended this book by my secondary school geography teacher shortly before starting university. Although my teacher did not know it, I had been questioning whether I’d made the right choice in choosing Geography for my degree, but this book captivated me like no other and assuaged my academic concerns. 

Los Angeles is a world-famous city that means very different things to different people. Davis shows how Los Angeles is simultaneously a utopia and a dystopia, a place of gated communities and private police forces, where libraries look like fortresses and prisons, on the outside at least, resemble futuristic hotels.

Over three decades after the first edition’s publication, this book remains essential reading for anyone seeking a sobering peek into…

By Mike Davis ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked City of Quartz as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias.

In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs…


Book cover of The Loved One

Sarah Murray Author Of Making an Exit

From my list on our approach to death says a lot about how we live.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my non-fiction books, my travel writing, and as a Financial Times contributor, I’ve always been drawn to two questions: How does the world work? And what makes us human? Seeking answers to these questions has taken me on extraordinary journeys and given me the excuse to meet some fascinating people. In this, I consider myself extremely lucky.

Sarah's book list on our approach to death says a lot about how we live

Sarah Murray Why Sarah loves this book

I first read this book as a teenager and missed the full force of its ferocious satire. Re-reading it years later, I laughed out loud. Waugh’s genius is to set his story of a love triangle in a Los Angeles funeral home. This way, he gets to poke fun at Hollywood and the American funeral industry while giving the dead a prominent role in the drama.

When, for example, embalmer Mr. Joyboy starts wooing young cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos, he does it through the expressions he puts on the faces of the corpses he sends to her makeup studio. When Aimée falls for his rival, a poet and pet mortician, the beatific smiles of Mr. Joyboy’s death turn into ghastly grimaces. It’s one of my favorite moments in the book—but there are many more.

By Evelyn Waugh ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Loved One as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

mordant short novel about expat life in Los Angeles


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Book cover of The Bridge: Connecting The Powers of Linear and Circular Thinking

The Bridge by Kim Hudson,

The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…

Book cover of The Big Nowhere

Steven Powell Author Of Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy

From my list on the king of LA noir James Ellroy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been fascinated by James Ellroy’s life and writing since I first discovered it as a lonely teenager on a rainswept family holiday. He went through dark times; the unsolved murder of his mother and his subsequent struggles with addiction. But how he overcame this to become one of America’s greatest writers is an inspiring story and has inspired me to get through my own personal turmoil. Indeed, many Ellroy readers will attest to how his life story and writing helped them overcome their struggles. Now as Ellroy’s biographer, I am continually drawn back to his work. Reading just a few pages allows me to contemplate what Ellroy calls ‘the Wonder’.

Steven's book list on the king of LA noir James Ellroy

Steven Powell Why Steven loves this book

This is a personal favourite as it’s the Ellroy novel that carries the biggest emotional punch. Although it didn’t match the sales of its predecessor The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere is a more accomplished novel. The setting is LA, 1950. A murder plot is interweaved with the politics of the Red Scare, and a Hollywood milieu at the height of the film noir age. This is the novel that proved Ellroy was a literary writer, and not just a genre one.

By James Ellroy ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The D. A.'s brass, a sheriff's deputy, and a rough-and-tumble bagman are unknowingly chasing a nightmare in this thrilling novel from the author of "some of the most powerful crime novels ever written" (New York Times).
Los Angeles, 1950 Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Gangland intrigue and Hollywood sleaze. Three cops caught in a hellish web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff's deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they're his chance to make his name as a cop...and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine…


Book cover of The Little Prince
Book cover of Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul
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