Here are 100 books that The Master and His Emissary fans have personally recommended if you like
The Master and His Emissary.
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I'm Carmen F. Vlasceanu, PhD, FIH, hospitality executive, mentor, and author who believes in leading with a good heart and living with purpose. Through my book Dare to C.A.R.E. and the life coaching I offer, I help people reconnect with their inner power, serve others authentically, and grow in every area of life. As a single mom, global citizen, and lifelong learner, I’ve walked through burnout, reinvention, and bold dreaming. These books have helped me rediscover my voice, redefine my mission, and remember what really matters. They helped ground me in faith, encouraged my evolution, and reminded me why meaningful connection always comes first.
This book helped me shift my mindset, and I first picked it up during a stressful phase of my life. I gave myself some time to simply breathe and take it in. It reminded me that the “now” is not just a passing second, but a sacred space where peace and clarity live.
I love how it helped me stop living in the echo of yesterday or the fear of tomorrow. I remember closing my eyes and whispering, “This moment is enough,” and feeling my shoulders relax for the first time in weeks. It helped me feel more connected with myself, my son, my clients, and in doing so, intentionally live every moment with more compassion, stillness, and supremacy.
**CHOSEN BY OPRAH AS ONE OF HER 'BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH'**
The international bestselling spiritual book, now with a new look for its 20th anniversary. Eckhart Tolle demonstrates how to live a healthier, happier, mindful life by living in the present moment.
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'I keep Eckhart's book at my bedside. I think it's essential spiritual teaching. It's one of the most valuable books I've ever read.' Oprah Winfrey
To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Big things have happened long ago and far away. As a kid born into the American Midwest in the Cold War, the world out there seemed like a scary place. But reading was a way to imagine other realities, and from college onward, I have been fortunate enough to encounter people in person and on paper who share their stories if you put in the work and listen. Keeping your ears open, unknown but intelligible worlds of personal contingencies and impersonal forces from other times and places can be glimpsed. How better to begin exploring the communion and conflict than by attending to changes in our practices of eating and medicating?
I grew up hearing about how civilization emerged because of striving to get there, that it was intentional and glorious, a huge progressive step.
Scott is brilliant at showing how living in large, organized groups was an unintended outcome, fragile and precarious and often a failure: not an accident but not willed into being, either. It came from certain kinds of environments, mostly riverine regions that often flooded, where humans could live in larger groups because of grains. Then, as powerful people were able to “tax” the possessors of grain-bearing plants—because they were visible and vulnerable—states emerged.
In other words, Scott shows that our ways of life came from something more like natural law than from any sort of revelation or forethought. The nature of grains did it.
"History as it should be written."-Barry Cunliffe, Guardian
"Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order."-Walter Scheidel, Financial Times
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical…
Maitreyabandhu started attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990 and given the name Maitreyabandhu. Since then he has lived and worked at the LBC, teaching Buddhism and meditation, and leading retreats. He has written three books on Buddhism, Thicker than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path, Life with Full Attention: A Practical Course in Mindfulness, and The Journey and the Guide: A Practical Guide in Enlightenment. Maitreyabandhu is also a prize-winning poet having written three poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books. Maitreyabandhu founded PoetryEast in 2010 where he interviews well-known artists and writers, including Antony Gormley, Wendy Cope, and Colm Tóibín. He is the co-founder, with Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, of Breathing Space, the LBC’s health and wellbeing project.
There’s a lot of writing out there about mindfulness and meditation, but this book is really the place to start. Sangharakshita writes with a depth of clarity that manages to be inspiring, philosophical, and practical all at the same time. I can find books on mindfulness worthy and dull. This book is neither. My copy is covered with highlighter pen!
A discussion of the issues raised in the Satipatthana Sutta, the foundational Buddhist discourse on meditation and the importance of mindfulness and awareness in daily life. We can learn to live more fully by living every moment to the full.
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
Maitreyabandhu started attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990 and given the name Maitreyabandhu. Since then he has lived and worked at the LBC, teaching Buddhism and meditation, and leading retreats. He has written three books on Buddhism, Thicker than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path, Life with Full Attention: A Practical Course in Mindfulness, and The Journey and the Guide: A Practical Guide in Enlightenment. Maitreyabandhu is also a prize-winning poet having written three poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books. Maitreyabandhu founded PoetryEast in 2010 where he interviews well-known artists and writers, including Antony Gormley, Wendy Cope, and Colm Tóibín. He is the co-founder, with Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, of Breathing Space, the LBC’s health and wellbeing project.
More and more people are drawn to meditation but it’s easy to be confounded by all those books and online teachings. This book is a great way to start. A simple guide to Buddhist meditation – to what it means, and how to do it – it’s practical, clear, helpful, and short.
Provides traditional practices for the readers to learn how to exchange stress and anxiety for calm and clarity of mind, and transform anger and fear into kindness and self confidence. The author guides on meditation with anecdotes and tips, from his experience of teaching meditation of more than 15 years.
Why do I love books set in cemeteries? Maybe it’s because I grew up living right next to one and still do. I spent hours as a child wandering around and even playing hide and seek among the tombstones. It’s a place where the living and dead meet, a place of mourning, memories, and peace. Cemeteries have so many superstitions and lore surrounding them. The stories written about them can be spooky, mysterious, sad, heartfelt, and any number of things, so the ideas are endless.
This was one of the strangest, most beautiful books I’ve ever read. At first, the format can throw you off. A chorus of dead voices, snippets of historical and imagined texts? But once I got into the rhythm, it felt like something sacred. The cemetery setting becomes a limbo space where spirits cling to their stories, fears, and unfinished business.
I found myself unexpectedly emotional, especially in how it portrayed grief—Lincoln’s grief, yes, but also the collective grief of the dead. It made me think about what we leave behind and how love can echo even after death. It was haunting in the best way.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns…
Maitreyabandhu started attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990 and given the name Maitreyabandhu. Since then he has lived and worked at the LBC, teaching Buddhism and meditation, and leading retreats. He has written three books on Buddhism, Thicker than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path, Life with Full Attention: A Practical Course in Mindfulness, and The Journey and the Guide: A Practical Guide in Enlightenment. Maitreyabandhu is also a prize-winning poet having written three poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books. Maitreyabandhu founded PoetryEast in 2010 where he interviews well-known artists and writers, including Antony Gormley, Wendy Cope, and Colm Tóibín. He is the co-founder, with Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, of Breathing Space, the LBC’s health and wellbeing project.
Buddhism is still misunderstood in the modern world. It can seem all fuzzy ‘being-in-the-moment’ meditation or a rather cold, analytical non-self philosophy. Sangharakshita is the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and my own teacher (I knew him personally). This book collects together some of his essential teaching and thought, illuminating ancient Buddhism wisdom for a modern world.
Profoundly knowledgeable and articulate, and equally at home with science, philosophy, myth, art, and poetry, Urgyen Sangharakshita uses every inner avenue to communicate the timeless Dharma to the Western mind. Engaging both the intellect and the heart countless times in a single chapter, the author draws remarkably apt examples from sources as diverse as Orwell, Aeschylus, and Jane Austen. This distilled volume is a primer to the breadth and depth of Buddhist thought and practice.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
At age sixteen, I traveled from Pennsylvania to Alaska’s wilderness to live for three months. I took Einstein’s book on relativity. My mind swirled and expanded. The next year, I wrote a paper for high school titled My Universe in Four Realities. Seven years later, I read Julian Jaynes’ book on consciousness. The epiphanies rolled in. The reality we’re taught to believe in always rang false to me. When I learned the inside tricks lawmakers use to stop Americans from blocking environmentally harmful industrial actions, I wrote a book about it. I’m passionate about exposing deceit, whether cultural or legal. These books helped.
Here’s a book that rearranged my thinking mind and opened a whole new universe of wonder to me. Digging deep for some way to understand how and why my conscious mind can construct a subjectively experienced universe in which I live and move was made a less lonely task when I encountered Julian Jaynes’ mind-blowing archaeology of subjective experience.
I was grateful to have some knowledge of ancient literature because I was taken on a tour not only of the words of the ancients but of the world they seem to have experienced subjectively, as revealed in their way of expressing themselves. The notion that subjective consciousness has not always existed as it does now for humans never seemed controversial to me, but the theory outlined here about HOW that evolution happened had me recommending this book frequently.
At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.
We have been fascinated by the power and energy of Love as far back as either of us remember. Each of our life's purposes revolves around the belief that Love is the most powerful force in the universe. We support our LoveFoundation and mission to bring Love awareness to individuals and to the world. We are both transformational life coaches and believe and teach that love is essence. Our mission is to change the paradigm of the world from fear to Love, building on the foundation of Absolute Love, restoring hope and faith into the hearts of the world.
A Return to Love creates an inspirational story about trusting love as an absolute reality.
Marianne uses her own experience to enhance the lives of others. The results of returning to love help one to stay in the realm of answers with a new level of awareness. Perspective shifts, and love thoughts occur at a deeper level. Mindful celebrations are shared including grief and acknowledgment of disappointments to help one process and forgive to honestly celebrate new beginnings.
Courage is taught as one learns to celebrate the spiritual warrior within to face fear and anger with the brilliance of returning to love. Unconditional love is a gift available to all.
Back by popular demand -- and newly updated by the author -- the mega-bestselling spiritual guide in which Marianne Williamson shares her reflections on A Course in Miracles and her insights on the application of love in the search for inner peace.
Williamson reveals how we each can become a miracle worker by accepting God and by the expression of love in our daily lives. Whether psychic pain is in the area of relationships, career, or health, she shows us how love is a potent force, the key to inner peace, and how by practicing love we can make our…
I started meditating in my min-40s as I was in a stressful job. I resisted at first, thinking I was too busy and that I couldn’t make my active mind go quiet. I persisted though and soon discovered that I had a better day all around on days when I meditated and seemed to be pushing water uphill when I missed my morning meditation.
Intrigued by this, the engineer in me researched why this might be. I started writing books on how it can help and I learned how to script and record my own meditations. Over fifteen years later, I find myself as one of the top meditation guides on the Insight Timer app, with over 4 million listens.
The author of this book, Frances Trussell, explains so succinctly why the blessing of our self-aware mind can so easily become a curse for so many humans. So mindfulness and meditation is not so much about having no thoughts or making your mind go blank. Rather it is about coming to a different relationship with your thoughts. On the other side, lies a life of bliss and freedom.
We all wish to be more mindful, engaged, present - loving the life we are living, but is this possible and how? You Are Not Your Thoughts: The Secret Magic of Mindfulness makes the journey into a mindful way of being a profoundly simple one, both to understand and to access. It is a book for those who want to truly know the power of mindfulness to transform their experience of life. '...There are thousands of books out there to help us combat our inner self-destructive voice... if I could go back in time and read only one book on…
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…
I started meditating in my min-40s as I was in a stressful job. I resisted at first, thinking I was too busy and that I couldn’t make my active mind go quiet. I persisted though and soon discovered that I had a better day all around on days when I meditated and seemed to be pushing water uphill when I missed my morning meditation.
Intrigued by this, the engineer in me researched why this might be. I started writing books on how it can help and I learned how to script and record my own meditations. Over fifteen years later, I find myself as one of the top meditation guides on the Insight Timer app, with over 4 million listens.
On the surface, this book might not seem like a book on mindfulness. The author probably wouldn’t make that claim. It is all about the mind though and how we think. Our thoughts don’t so much become things but they are things. What we think influences the world outside us, not just in how we perceive it but by our thoughts actually being mirrored in our reality. In an unusual style, of channeled Q&A, Lee Carroll outlines how we can think differently and, as a result, our world changes for the better.
Magnetic master Lee Kryon answers questions about Earth changes, live essence medicines, past-life relationships, and the nature of extraterrestrials. Carroll has good news about how humans have raised the vibration of the planet, thus avoiding much of the catastrophe predicted by the prophets. Kryon says, "I admonish you to let yourself feel my presence in your heart, and let yourself have the peace which can be yours...." In 1988, Carroll began channeling the entity known as Kryon. Now, he and his wife Jan hold seminars on the Kryon material all over the world.
