Here are 58 books that The Inner Circle fans have personally recommended if you like
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While the pacing, suspense, and twists of a well-crafted modern-day thriller can bring their own rewards, I find that when the thriller is enriched by the cultures of the past, the story can become one of powerful depth. Exploring modern-day morals, laws, or customs can be the start of a canvas painted with far more vivid contrasts. Reading some of these mixed-genre marvels inspired me to write The Book of Judges.
The rich history of the Knights Templar, their fall from incredible wealth and power in the fourteenth century, and the mystery behind the undiscovered treasure they supposedly left behind, lay a wondrous landscape upon which Steve Berry sets his first Cotton Malone thriller.
From its opening violent robbery attempt to the twists Malone encounters as he figures out just what the Templars left, and the potentially world-changing impact it could have, the tension perfectly intersects with the history. And it has the three key plot components to a great story in this mixed-genre: intriguing puzzles, huge secrets, and huge stakes.
The first explosive thriller in the Cotton Malone series from a New York Times megaselling author.
The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power, until the Inquisition destroyed them and their riches were lost forever.
But some people don't believe in 'forever'.
Ex-agent Cotton Malone used to work for Stephanie Nelle in the US Justice Department. Now Nelle wants his help to crack a series of puzzles that have confounded experts for centuries - and could lead to the legendary lost treasure of the Knights Templar.
Little does attorney Hiram Garbuncle know the danger he’s getting into when he reluctantly defends an immigrant brutally beaten by two policemen during a traffic stop and charged with resisting arrest.
Plot twists and turns take the reader on a suspense-filled roller coaster ride as the attorney’s negligence causes a…
I live in a 200+ year old house and have always been drawn to stories with dual timelines where the past and present intersect. Living in an old house where people lived and died, and exploring historic sites for my blog Past Lane Travels, I’m constantly aware of the lives that came before mine. I love the idea that something hidden in the past can still shape the present – and sometimes it seems like it’s just waiting to be uncovered by the right person. When stories are set in real places, it adds even more intrigue—I can visit, walk the same ground, and experience it for myself.
I think I am probably the last person in the world to read this book!
I know it’s received a lot of attention, but somehow it never appealed to me when it first came out. After reading it, I love the way the author blends art history and cryptography within a complex (and believable) conspiracy. It was such a unique plotline when it came out, and now it’s almost its own genre.
I’m drawn to books that have a real setting that you can visit today, and this one takes place at The Louvre.
Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes.
As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history.
Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the…
While the pacing, suspense, and twists of a well-crafted modern-day thriller can bring their own rewards, I find that when the thriller is enriched by the cultures of the past, the story can become one of powerful depth. Exploring modern-day morals, laws, or customs can be the start of a canvas painted with far more vivid contrasts. Reading some of these mixed-genre marvels inspired me to write The Book of Judges.
This story is cleverly constructed around a mythical chess set once owned by Charlemagne that is capable, upon complete assembly, of providing its owner with untold power.
Its parallel timelines start in the French Revolution, where an order of nuns is charged with dispersing the pieces to keep them from the wrong hands. In the modern-day story, Catherine Vellis, a computer expert sent to Algeria on an assignment, gets caught up in a chase to reunite them.
The prose is as magical as the story, particularly in its richly detailed look at revolutionary France.
A fantasy novel from the author of A CALCULATED RISK. The secret of the Eight is a puzzle whose solution has challenged the most brilliant minds known to humanity. Catherine Velis is manipulated into using her unrivalled problem-solving skills to find and reassemble to legendary chess set.
Little does attorney Hiram Garbuncle know the danger he’s getting into when he reluctantly defends an immigrant brutally beaten by two policemen during a traffic stop and charged with resisting arrest.
Plot twists and turns take the reader on a suspense-filled roller coaster ride as the attorney’s negligence causes a…
While the pacing, suspense, and twists of a well-crafted modern-day thriller can bring their own rewards, I find that when the thriller is enriched by the cultures of the past, the story can become one of powerful depth. Exploring modern-day morals, laws, or customs can be the start of a canvas painted with far more vivid contrasts. Reading some of these mixed-genre marvels inspired me to write The Book of Judges.
It delivers incredible heart to this mixed-genre by adding time travel to the mix, and bringing the ancient world into this modern-day thriller in a love story across millennia.
The puzzles and tension come hard and fast when a man who claims to be Mannu-ki-Ashur, Chief Physician to King Ashurbanipal, in 7th Century BCE, comes into the life of Dr. Kate Mayne, a heartbroken Assyriologist.
A love lost in time. A cure buried in history. A mystery that spans millennia.For fans of historical fantasy, archaeological thrillers, and sweeping time travel fiction, Glenn Cooper’s newest novel brings the ancient world vividly to life. The Physician of Nineveh blends the intrigue of an ancient Mesopotamian empire with the heart of a love story across centuries.London, present day. Dr. Kate Mayne, a brilliant Assyriologist still recovering from heartbreak, devotes her life to uncovering the secrets of the ancient world. She never expects one of those secrets to walk into her life—claiming to be a royal physician from the…
Throughout my career, I’ve always been passionate about leveling the playing field for women. I do this through my writing, speaking, and investing. Much of my current work is informed by the 20 years I spent in corporate as both an executive and a mentor to hundreds of women. The books I’ve chosen for this list are written by women I admire and who espouse similar approaches to the way I lead and show up at work. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
Personal History is Katharine Graham’s memoir. She became the first female Fortune 500 CEO when she took over at The Washington Post. From having Warren Buffet as a mentor to presiding over The Washington Post during Watergate, her life was absolutely fascinating. There is so much to learn about leading, women’s empowerment, and how we show up at work through Graham’s journey. What makes this book unique, though, is that in addition to being a classic in the women’s leadership genre, it’s as juicy and riveting as your best suspense novel.
As seen in the new movie The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep, here is the captivating, inside story of the woman who piloted the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media.
In this bestselling and widely acclaimed memoir, Katharine Graham, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, tells her story - one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candour and dignity of its telling.
I am a historian, curator, and writer born and raised in New York City, a place whose history intrigued me from an early age. With a mother who moved from small-town New Jersey to Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and a father who had childhood memories of World War I in the Bronx, I think my interest was sort of preordained. I remain fascinated by cities as engines of change, as flashpoints for conflict, and as places that are simultaneously powerful and vulnerable.
“A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm” is how John F. Kennedy described Washington. Margaret Leech’s classic describes how the Civil War transformed a sleepy Southern town into the capital of a muscle-flexing nation-state, as well as a target for Confederate attacks. Along the way we meet characters as varied as spy Rose O’Neal Greenow, poet Walt Whitman, nurse Clara Barton, the egotistical General George McClellan, and an unstable actor named John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is present, but one of Leech’s achievements is to treat Abe as a member of a larger human constellation, not as the automatic center of the universe, and that’s refreshing.
Overview 1860: The American capital is sprawling, fractured, squalid, colored by patriotism and treason, and deeply divided along the political lines that will soon embroil the nation in bloody conflict. Chaotic and corrupt, the young city is populated by bellicose congressmen, Confederate conspirators, and enterprising prostitutes. Soldiers of a volunteer army swing from the dome of the Capitol, assassins stalk the avenues, and Abraham Lincoln struggles to justify his presidency as the Union heads to war. Reveille in Washington focuses on the everyday politics and preoccupations of Washington during the Civil War. From the stench of corpse-littered streets to the…
I became a historian because I am nosy. I like to know what is going on in other people’s lives. I study politics because I am fascinated by power—who has it? How did they get it? I took up this project not knowing much about First Ladies or Pat Nixon. My quest to know more led to the correspondence between Pat and her closest friend. The letters in these files allowed me to hear Pat’s voice describe her life as a politician’s wife, as Second Lady, and as a regular citizen. I feel privileged to be able to share that with the world.
Lady Bird’s diary is worth reading no matter what you are studying. She is insightful, funny, and attentive to her unique perspective as First Lady. In terms of understanding Pat, the diary offers an outsider’s view from someone who understood Pat’s situation personally. The tidbits concerning their first post-election meeting and then subsequent visits provide evidence of Pat’s humor, humility, and kindness.
I have always been fascinated by the sociopathic mind. I sometimes feel that sociopaths are, in many ways, freer than the rest of us. They are divorced from the crippling feelings of guilt and remorse. Throughout my writing career, I have interacted with both cops and career criminals and I have become convinced that they share similar mindsets. They may not be full-blown sociopaths (though some are), but they have what I would call “a touch” of the sociopathic mind. They are essentially the same people. This is a theme that I find my writing continually dwells on—the freedom of having an anti-social personality and its consequences for both society and the individual.
This ballsy, initially self-published debut novel from the late, great Vince Flynn asks: What if unknown, highly-skilled assassins began killing off politicians until Washington agrees to set aside partisan politics and restore power to the people? It’s basically draining the swamp with a rifle barrel. It’s a controversial premise, but a hell of an entertaining read and even though the novel was written in 1997, it feels timely as ever. Personally, I love when novels explore social issues in entertaining ways. This is something I strive to accomplish in each of my novels. Term Limitspulls it off with flying colors.
On an overcast night in Washington D.C. a group of highly trained killers embark on a mission of shattering brutality. A shocked country awakens to the devastating news that three of their most powerful and unscrupulous politicians have been brutally murdered. In the political firestorm and media frenzy that follow, the assassins release their demands: either the country's leaders set aside their petty, partisan politics and restore power to the people, or be held to deadly account. Only Michael O'Rourke, a junior congressman, holds a clue to the violence: a haunting incident in his own past with explosive implications for…
In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Radical Sistersdoes for the 1970s what I tried to do for the nineteenth century—to show that while Black and white women activists usually worked separately and embraced different and often opposing priorities, some women forged interracial alliances to address shared concerns. Valk also reminds us that divisions among white feminists and among Black liberationists could be as contentious as those between the two groups. By focusing on Washington, D.C., the population of which was over 70 percent Black in 1970, Valk ensures the centrality of race to every issue she analyzes. Providing in-depth case studies of anti-poverty movements, welfare rights, lesbian separatism, anti-sexual violence, and reproductive rights, Valk shows how these movements shaped each other as well as the limits of and possibilities for forging truly interracial coalitions.
Radical Sisters is a fresh exploration of the ways that 1960s political movements shaped local, grassroots feminism in Washington, D.C. Rejecting notions of a universal sisterhood, Anne M. Valk argues that activists periodically worked to bridge differences for the sake of improving women's plight, even while maintaining distinct political bases. Washington, D.C. is a critical site for studying the dynamics of the feminist movement, not only for its strategic location vis-a-vis the federal government but because in 1970 over seventy percent of the city's population was African American. While most historiography on the subject tends to portray the feminist movement…
My two passions in life are music (especially punk rock) and history, so obviously books about music history really hit the spot for me. As both a fan and a writer / performer, learning about the history of the music I love is very important (not to mention entertaining) for me. Here are some of my favourites.
Tells the story of the further development of punk in Washington DC, and the birth of a thousand subgenres, from emo to post-hardcore and beyond, and punk's embracing of a more aware political consciousness, as well as a broader musical spectrum.
The nation's capital gave birth to the most influential punk underground of the '80s and '90s. Dance of Days recounts the rise of trailblazing artists such as Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, Fugazi, and Bikini Kill.
