Books like The Beach — picked by fans

I have been a keen walker/hiker/backpacker since I was five when my parents named a local footpath James’s Path. Almost fifty years later, I have walked all over the UK and further afield in the Pyrenees and the Alps, Nepal, and the Antipodes. Walking for me is both a means to an end—to reach mountaineering routes and as exercise—and as an end in itself. Days spent walking can be reflective, social, demanding, and memorable. I always take a book, even if it's a day walk, and two or three if it’s a multiday trip. I hope you’re as energized and stimulated by my suggestions as I’ve been.

I’m passionate about this theme because I grew up inside the kind of silence most people never see—the kind shaped by responsibility, fear, love, and the need to stay strong before you’re old enough to understand why. I’ve lived through the quiet wounds, the invisible burdens, and the unspoken grief that shaped every part of me. Stories like these make people like me feel less alone. They remind us that survival has its own language, and that the things we carry silently are worth naming. I write about quiet pain because it’s the world I came from, and the world I learned to rise out of.

My life was altered forever when my family moved from California to Suffolk, England. I attended an English school and was exposed to English literature, music, and history. I visited Poet’s Corner in Winchester Cathedral in London, Shakespeare’s home and grave in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and numerous English villages and gardens. Through these experiences, I fell in love with words and rhythm and how they can be used to tell stories. In college, I took a trip across Europe that further transformed my life as I encountered the art and history of Italy and France and the fascinating tableau of cultures across the continent, a trip that further expanded my appreciation of art, architecture, and creativity. 

When I was twelve years old, my picture appeared in my hometown newspaper. I was holding a huge stack of books from the library, a week’s reading. All science fiction. I’ve read voraciously for the past seventy years—though much more widely as an adult. I’ve also had a life founding several small companies and writing twenty books. But I’ve continued to read science fiction, and, increasingly, dystopian novels. Why? Because, as a history buff, I think about the big trends that shape our lives. I see clearly that climate change, breakthroughs in technology, and unstable politics threaten our children’s future. I want to understand how these trends might play out—for better or for worse.

I’ve always thought that the most clear-eyed, unforgiving observers in literature are teenagers, not because adolescence is simple (it’s the opposite), but because young people haven’t yet learned to shrug and look away. The novels I've chosen here all have central characters who see the adult world's failures, hypocrisies, and prejudices with a directness that most of us gradually lose; and they all use coming of age as a way to confront a world that is already, in some fundamental way, broken – by grief, violence, or the gap between what adults promise and what they deliver. Those are exactly the themes I love to write about.

Having been born in Fiji and lived in Cyprus, Austria, and Nigeria, I have always had a strong sense of wanderlust and a keen eye for my surroundings – both natural and man-made. I’ve always been open to "what might happen next," which makes sense as to why I became a professional storyteller – an actor, writer, and director. I am thrilled by not knowing what lies ahead, and I’ve always felt there is possible adventure at every turn in life, which is why I am so fond of the evocative and thrilling books I have listed.

After retiring from a career in climate science, I reinvented myself as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, and a writer. I write personal essays about my life experiences, in particular my time teaching in Thailand. Before I traveled to Thailand, while I was there, and when I returned home to the US, I devoured every book I could find that could help me make sense of Thai culture and manage as a farang (foreigner, Westerner) in the Land of Smiles. Here are my five picks for helping other farangs understand Thailand.

I’m a writer and journalist with an eye on South and Southeast Asia. I first worked in Thailand in 1999, researching the Thailand chapter for the first edition of the Rough Guides Southeast Asia Guide. Since 2001, I’ve been a Thailand correspondent for German publisher Reise Know How. For the past decade, I have worked as Thailand Destination Expert for The Daily Telegraph. I co-wrote the bestselling Sacred Skin – Thailand’s Spirit Tattoos with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, and have written countless articles about Thai culture, politics and tourism. It took 20 years to write a novel set in Thailand – The Monsoon Ghost Image – a testament to the complexities of Thai society. 

I’m a writer and journalist with an eye on South and Southeast Asia. I first worked in Thailand in 1999, researching the Thailand chapter for the first edition of the Rough Guides Southeast Asia Guide. Since 2001, I’ve been a Thailand correspondent for German publisher Reise Know How. For the past decade, I have worked as Thailand Destination Expert for The Daily Telegraph. I co-wrote the bestselling Sacred Skin – Thailand’s Spirit Tattoos with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, and have written countless articles about Thai culture, politics and tourism. It took 20 years to write a novel set in Thailand – The Monsoon Ghost Image – a testament to the complexities of Thai society. 

When I emigrated from the UK to Western Australia as a child, one of my first big moments was learning about sharks and realising swimming in the ocean was not the same as in the sea. Ever since writing my thriller The Shark, I’ve been on the lookout for novels with sharks in the title or on the page. Real sharks, human sharks, property sharks, sharks of the mind and the heart, these are stories that have influenced me, entertained me, beguiled, terrified, and at times utterly blindsided me.