100 Books Like Summerland

Set in the height of the Cold War, The Men Who Stare at Goats is the story of the US Army’s psychic warfare unit, the First Earth Battalion. These self-declared “warrior monks” trained in remote viewing and aspired to psychic slay capra with the force of their concentration.

Unlike the rest of the books on my list, The Men Who Stare at Goats is non-fiction. The bulk of the material in these pages are interviews with people in the First Earth Battalion.

Reading this book made me question the reality of psychic phenomena. Is there something to it? Or was this the result of a Soviet PSYOP (psychological operation, not psychic operation) to make the American military-industrial complex waste a lot of money?

Tim Powers is my #1 role model. His secret history novels take a figure or incident from history that happens to be surrounded by unexplained weirdness, then explain all these strange, loose threads through the supernatural. His work scratches the itch for both history buffs and the (harmlessly) conspiracy-minded.

To call Three Days to Never a supernatural thriller would be reductionist. Powers casts a wide net when gathering story elements; Einstein’s fictional, time-traveling family is the centerpiece, but Mossad agents, a collective of magicians, and Charlie Chaplin’s legacy are all thrown into the mix. All are seeking the secret to time travel.

Powers writes free from the limitations of the genre. Breaking the boundaries imposed by marketing and showing the reader what’s possible when the imagination is unbound.

I became aware of Mind MGMT during the first draft of my book. Its success affirmed that an audience for psychic thrillers did exist. But I put off reading this 6-volume comic series until I finished my novel. It’s good to feel encouraged, it’s another to feel beaten to the punch.

Super-hero tropes dominate the American comic medium. The story elements of weekly world salvation, good guys vs bad guys, stagnate character development, and the artistic choices; idealized anatomy, fine lines, and bright colors appeal to a younger male gaze.

By all these standards, Mind MGMT stands apart. In this morally ambiguous story of psychic spies, Matt Kindt’s illustrations are raw and sketchy, complimented by his choice to color the pages with watercolor rather than digital inks.

If you’re too young to remember The Gong Show, it was the American Idol of its day. Equally as fake, but upfront about its fraudulent nature.

Back on the subject of pushing genre boundaries, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is Chuck Barris’ “unauthorized autobiography.” Get your head around that concept. Barris was the producer/host of both The Gong Show and The Dating Game. If that doesn’t sound like a full slate, Barris claims he was a CIA assassin during this time.

Say you wrote an autobiography, but it lacks in the excitement department. Say you also wrote a spy novel, but it came in at half the length a publisher’s looking for. A great solution for both problems; mash them together!

Along with Le Carre Adam Hall was my magical touchstone to understanding what being an exceptional thriller writer meant.

This book, the second in a long distinguished series, continued the crises dealt with by the British spy named Quiller. Hall had an idiosyncratic way of writing that taught me that style was as important as plot in a thriller – perhaps even more. For me, style is what grabs my attention as a reader.

Today, style is what draws me along, both as a reader and as a writer of thrillers. Style is the thread on which is built both plot and characters. It is also imperative when setting scenes in faraway places.

David Crist is the historian of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—and the son of former CENTCOM Commander, General George B. Crist.  He knows this subject backwards and forwards and brings to light any number of topics that I had only ever seen discussed in the classified world. But he does so with the perspicacity of a military historian and the insight of a superb military analyst. Most people simply do not know about the many close calls and bloody clashes there were between the U.S. and Iran during this era, and Crist’s book fills that important gap. Moreover, this is a fascinating example of a protracted, low-intensity or “hybrid” conflict with a canny and determined foe and so it has no end of lessons to teach. 

It’s become an irritating cliché for dustjacket blurbs on nonfiction books to claim that the book in your hands “reads like a thriller”.

More often than not, I only have to read a couple of dozen pages before realising that the book in question merely reads like the raw material for a thriller. But Howard Blum has the rare, almost alchemical knack of transforming mountains of historical research into nonfiction that really does feel like the most exciting of thrillers.

You can see why so many of his books—Dark Invasion among them—have been optioned by movie producers. 

Dan Golden is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposes how enemies of the United States are using our universities and graduate schools as recruitment centers for a new generation of spies.

Russian, Chinese, and of course, Cuban intelligence services are having a field day exploiting our open system to identify and turn their newest recruits (yes, our government returns the favor abroad.)

Spy Schools has an excellent chapter on Ana Montes, the Cuban agent who is the subject of my book. There’s also juicy information on the American woman who recruited Ana as a spy when they both were attending SAIS, the Johns Hopkins graduate school in Washington. 

George Smiley is a most unlikely hero for a spy thriller. He’s old, tired, and just wants to be left with his books and his research. He wears big, comical glasses, and his wife, the lovely Lady Anne, refers to him as her “Toad.” He doesn’t look like a spy at all.

George is old-school—careful, meticulous, and precise. In this book, we are gifted with an insider's view of a gimlet mind as he sifts through the traces of all that’s been buried, in pursuit, not only of the truth but of the foul trick that has turned the British Secret Service inside out. I came to deeply respect George’s integrity, his ability to self-evaluate, and see clearly not only the strategies and ploys of his enemy but also his own flaws and weaknesses.

I was hooked the minute I started reading this cute spy thriller. The romance is sweet, and the suspense is cozy. I think because I’ve always been a fan of Ally Carter, this series was the perfect next book to read. After reading it, I now want to be part of the Banana Club and go on undercover missions.

I left like the book was a perfect blend of Charlie’s Angels meets Nancy Drew. I also enjoyed the fast-paced action and the out-of-this-world gadgets. I even found myself laughing out loud at some of the humor. I can’t wait to read more books about Mari, Hannah Anna, and the rest of the team!