Here are 100 books that The Chimera Vector fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love character-driven, roller coaster ride stories. As a young reader, I gravitated to the “choose your own adventure” books which relied on invoking knotted stomachs, and cold sweats in children as they struggled to make the right decision before reading on; turn to page 105 if you want to face the ravenous bear or page 23 if you wish to flee. Thus, the love of reading emerged and, eventually, the joy of writing followed. These books are just some of the stories that bring similar nostalgic tones when I delve into their pages. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Whilst the Lord of the Rings trilogy should be read as one story, my favourite of the series is the second book, The Two Towers.
I loved the separation of our characters and the focus on one narrative concerning one group in its entirety before we see what happens to the other group. It was a new way of reading when I first read The Two Towers.
Prior, my encounter with books containing multiple storylines saw intercut sections, switching from one set of characters to the other.
I particularly enjoyed the overarching dread surrounding the story of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. For me, there were many gut-wrenching moments when hope fizzled away. The character building in these moments is exquisite.
This brand-new unabridged audio book of The Two Towers, the second part of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings, is read by the BAFTA award-winning actor, director and author, Andy Serkis.
The company of the Ring is torn asunder. Frodo and Sam continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.
This continues the classic tale begun in The Fellowship of the Ring, which reaches its awesome climax in The Return of the King.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Scary books and movies hooked me early in life and never let go. I’m fascinated by the themes that are explored in all of the various sub-genres of horror. I’m intrigued by the lore that’s created, and I’m impressed with the imagination of so many horror creators. Horror remains and always will be one of the most popular genres of storytelling.
I read this as a teenager, just as I was diving into the horror genre. I already knew at this point that I wanted to be a storyteller. What struck me while reading It was the jumping back and forth between time periods.
I had never read a book structured that way, and it seemed that every chapter ended on a cliffhanger, forcing me to keep reading. There aren’t many books that I would say I had a hard time putting down (I get bored easily), but It was certainly one of them!
This tie-in edition will be available from 16 July
TIE IN TO A NEW MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, IT: CHAPTER 2, ADAPTED FROM KING'S TERRIFYING CLASSIC
27 years later, the Losers Club have grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back...
Derry, Maine was just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live.
It was a group of children who saw- and felt- what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes…
I love character-driven, roller coaster ride stories. As a young reader, I gravitated to the “choose your own adventure” books which relied on invoking knotted stomachs, and cold sweats in children as they struggled to make the right decision before reading on; turn to page 105 if you want to face the ravenous bear or page 23 if you wish to flee. Thus, the love of reading emerged and, eventually, the joy of writing followed. These books are just some of the stories that bring similar nostalgic tones when I delve into their pages. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
I’d categorise it as a dark thriller that created some of the tightest knots in my stomach. The concept alone was enough to generate terror, anxiety, and anger from the first page onward. But anything that involves the endangerment of children does that to me.
A gripping tale that puts the victims, both the kidnapped and the kidnappers, in peril from an unseen syndicate who controls their actions with a phone call.
When a mother is targeted by a dangerous group of masterminds, she must commit a crime to save her kidnapped daughter—or risk losing her forever—in this "propulsive and original" award-winning thriller (Stephen King).
It's something parents do every morning: Rachel Klein drops her daughter at the bus stop and heads into her day. But a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything: it's a woman on the line, informing her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a…
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
I am a novelist with a passion for reading and it is this which I feel qualifies me to speak on this topic. My reading is eclectic across the crime/mystery genre and there’s nothing I love more than a book that sucks me right into the same world its characters inhabit, something all five of my choices did. As a novelist I appreciate the way these novels all use the weather conditions to add an extra layer of threat to the protagonists and it’s something I’ve always wanted to emulate.
With this stunning introduction to Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield, Reilly hits the heights of adventure like few before him.
The action is non-stop and just when you think you have a chance to breathe, the frigid Antarctic conditions rear their head. Not so much a full on foe, as a general hindrance, I loved Ice Station because Reilly’s sparse descriptions of the landscape and inhospitable weather were just enough to bring a sympathetic shiver to me before the action kicked off again.
A fast-paced thriller from bestselling author Matthew Reilly, Ice Station.
Antarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself...
A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else...
First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors…
I’m fascinated by the dichotomy between humanity’s beauty and its penchant for visiting horror upon the world. This fascination drove me to write my own werewolf novel (and keep it true to the heart of the mythos). In no other genre/subgenre is human double-nature better explored than the werewolf one. From earliest times, these tales examined human complexity, mental illness, moral responsibility, the tenuousness of our understanding of reality. For me, a great werewolf novel is notan erotic romance or comedy urban fantasy. It’s a monsterstory: antsy, atmospheric, dark, violent, fraught. It's a thriller, not a swooner, with more in common withJekyll and Hydeor Incredible Hulkthan with Twilight.
Okay, so the title already has you frowning. Stay with me here. This indie ebook novelette had me smiling, nodding, and ooo-ing. I loved the brave way the author attempted something new and, well, left field. Because this is a lot of left field…
Our main character is a hitman. Or is he? He’s a werewolf. Or is he? I loved every paragraph of this story’s prose. But it was this “what’s really going on here?” aspect that had me smiling all the way through. It reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road—because you can watch that entire movie as a psychotic episode on Max’s part. Same with this book. Leaves you guessing until the last page while keeping things fun along the way.
This Bizarro tale is part Naked Lunch, part Goodfellas.
Jasper Hobbes believes he is an assassin. He also believes demons were injected into his brain by the Illuminati, connecting him to the occult machinations of the Great Wyrm. Hospitalized once again for a psychotic break, Jasper is given an ultimatum—either continue his anti-psychotic drug therapy and accept what is real and what are delusions created by his disease, or be committed to a psychological hospital for the duration of his life.
In his struggle to avoid being pulled into a spiral of delusion, Jasper battles inhuman cosplayers, public transportation to…
I spent the last eleven years listening to people describe the worst day of their lives and how they found the grace and courage to persevere. Little in my professional training as a historian prepared me to sit with them and help them make sense of their past. Each of these books offers pathways to recapturing a violent past and imagining how we keep living.
It took McWhorter eighteen years to unlock the secrets of Birmingham, where she grew up. This is the finest local civil rights movement study, a sweeping story of Black courage in the face of repression.
It is also a deeply personal story. Asking why so many whites violently defended the color line, she found her answer hidden deep inside her own family’s history.
Now with a new afterword, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic account of the Civil Rights Era’s climactic battle in Birmingham as the movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation.
"The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America’s long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with black…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
To be a successful humorous cozy mystery author, character development is the key. Prior to writing cozy mysteries, like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I enjoyed a career as a ladies’ apparel sales exec. Fortunately for my writing gig, salespeople are also students of human nature. I've been fascinated by what makes people tick all my life and have taken all I have learned and applied it to my writing. The relationship between the protagonist and her sidekick is one that makes the characters in my stories imperfect, but believable, accents their individuality, and lets their personalities come alive so that readers can’t help but invest in them.
My younger sister and I are completely unlike. I fell in love with the protagonists of this debut book of the series after page one; two siblings even more unalike than my sis and me. Petite Patricia Anne—"Mouse"—is respectful, respectable, and demure, a perfect example of genteel Southern womanhood. Mary Alice—"Sister"—is big, brassy, flamboyant, and bold. Together they have a knack for finding themselves in the middle of some of Birmingham, Alabama's worst messes.In this book, overly impulsive Mary Alice thinks it makes perfect sense to buy the Skoot 'n' Boot bar—since that's where the many-times-divorced "Sister" and her boyfriend du jour hang out. Sensible retired schoolteacher Patricia Anne disagrees—especially when they find a strangled and stabbed dead body dangling in the pub's wishing well.
The sheriff has some questions for Mouse and her sister – Sister, who were the last people, besides the murderer, to see…
Patricia Anne -- "Mouse" -- is respectful, respectable, and demure, a perfect example of genteel Southern womanhood. Mary Alice -- "Sister" -- is big, brassy, flamboyant, and bold. Together they have a knack for finding themselves in the center of some of Birmingham's most unfortunate unpleasantness.
Country Western is red hot these days, so overimpulsive Mary Alice thinks it makes perfect sense to buy the Skoot 'n' Boot bar -- since that's where the many-times-divorced "Sister" and her boyfriend du jour like to hang out anyway. Sensible retired schoolteacher Patricia Anne is inclined to…
I completed my Ph.D. in history at Georgetown University in 1989 and have taught courses on the modern Middle East at the American University in Cairo since 1990. Since the early 2000s, I’ve been teaching a popular course on the history of Zionism. In developing the curriculum for my students, I searched for an English translation of the proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1897, a crucial moment in Jewish/Zionist history. When I discovered no such translation existed, I decided to do one myself. It was fascinating work, and the translation was published in 2019.
This anthology is heavily weighted toward the political and diplomatic dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I find the point-counterpoint of debates between representatives of Arab and Israeli governments stimulating: whatever one’s natural inclination, one has to take into account how political realities appear to someone from a totally different perspective.
I have found it valuable as a resource because it focuses on the conflict between Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians after 1948. The book is a mine of political speeches, summit declarations, newspaper editorials, organizational manifestoes, interstate treaties, and assorted other texts related to wars, negotiations, and peacemaking between Israel and the Arabs.
Now in its eighth edition, a essential resource on the more than century-old conflict in the Middle East
In print for nearly half a century, and now in its eighth edition, The Israel-Arab Reader is an authoritative guide to over a century of conflict in the Middle East. It covers the full spectrum of a violent and checkered history—the origins of Zionism and Arab nationalism, the struggles surrounding Israel’s independence in 1948, the Six-Day War and other wars and hostilities over the decades, and the long diplomatic process and many peace initiatives.
I am a historian of the Cold War and early post-Cold War period, focusing on Soviet/ Russian foreign policy in Afghanistan and in the Middle East in the 1970s and the 1980s. These are exciting topics on which an increasing number of new documents are released each year. I have a research project and lecture about these issues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. But academia is my second career. Before my Ph.D., I worked as an aid worker, including for two years in the Middle East. I was in the region during the height of the Syrian crisis, notably running humanitarian multi-sector needs assessments.
I bought Jeremy Bowen’s book by chance as I searched for books about the Middle East. I wanted something different from the traditional (and sometimes a bit difficult to read) academic nonfiction book. This book appealed to me because it was written in a journalistic style and because it was as much a book about recent history as one about Bowen’s own travels and encounters in the Middle East. Well, I was not disappointed.
I really enjoyed reading Bowen’s recollections of his time in the Middle East and critical reflections on great powers’ involvement there. That is a book I felt gave a good sense of how the West has mismanaged its policies in the region during the past fifty years.
A Spectator Book of the Year A New Statesman Book of the Year 'An illuminating and riveting read' - Jonathan Dimbleby
Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present.
In The Making of the Modern Middle East - in part based on his acclaimed podcast, 'Our Man in the Middle East' - Bowen takes us on a journey across the Middle East and through its history. He meets ordinary men and women on the front line, their leaders, whether…
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…
My interest in the ancient Near East began when I was about 8 years old. One day, when couldn’t find anything to do, I started paging through a book on Assyrian art that I found in one of my parents’ bookcases. I was hooked. I wanted to know what made those mysterious ancients tick. How did they understand the world they inhabited? How did they live? What made them fight so hard and so often? I became an Assyriologist in order to answer those questions, and I’ve been working toward that goal ever since.
Van de Mieroop’s history of the ancient Near East is concise, engaging, and up to date. For anyone new to the subject this book is a great place to start. Find out about the first cities and social institutions, ideologies and religious beliefs, long-distance trade, state formation, and the wars of imperial expansion. Van De Mieroop augments his narrative with passages from ancient sources, plenty of maps and illustrations, and information about important research questions and controversies.
Incorporating the latest scholarly research, the third edition of A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 323 BC presents a comprehensive overview of the multicultural civilizations of the ancient Near East. * Integrates the most up-to-date research, and includes a richer selection of supplementary materials * Addresses the wide variety of political, social, and cultural developments in the ancient Near East * Updated features include new Key Debate boxes at the end of each chapter to engage students with various perspectives on a range of critical issues; a comprehensive timeline of events; and 46 new illustrations, including 12…
