Here are 94 books that Ultramarine fans have personally recommended if you like
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Like some other things I’ve been lucky enough to have published, The Flying Dutchman is a short work I chiseled out of a longer one. An updating of the classic romantic legend, it’s the story of a young woman visited by a time-traveling pop star seeking the one woman he can love. The novella form—not novel, not short story—seemed to work best for it. It’s been the right shape for some of the most famous stories of all time, from Heart of Darkness to To Kill a Mockingbird and beyond.
I’ve traveled through time myself to choose some other favorite novellas that meaningfully capture a period and place.
The Scottish author Muriel Spark’s specialty was short, mordant, corrosive novels, the best known being, of course, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This one, published in 1970, was among her most striking.
A repressed woman’s vacation during the free-loving sixties turns out to be a date with death she may have initiated: the question lingers after you finish.
It became a flawed yet fascinating 1974 film with Elizabeth Taylor at her most—literally and figuratively—exposed.
Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday - in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.
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…
Like some other things I’ve been lucky enough to have published, The Flying Dutchman is a short work I chiseled out of a longer one. An updating of the classic romantic legend, it’s the story of a young woman visited by a time-traveling pop star seeking the one woman he can love. The novella form—not novel, not short story—seemed to work best for it. It’s been the right shape for some of the most famous stories of all time, from Heart of Darkness to To Kill a Mockingbird and beyond.
I’ve traveled through time myself to choose some other favorite novellas that meaningfully capture a period and place.
One of my favorite novels of any length, Nathanael West’s short 1939 classic is at the very least the most disturbing portrait of Golden Age Hollywood and its hangers-on ever written—hideous, poignant, horribly funny.
West himself wrote scripts for B-movies in the thirties. His death at thirty-three in a car crash was perhaps, in its awful and infuriating ridiculousness, fitting. And it was the day after F. Scott Fitzgerald died.
Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the "Best 100 English-language novels" by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song "Day of the Locusts" in homage and Matt Groening's Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes - actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles. But it's the…
Like some other things I’ve been lucky enough to have published, The Flying Dutchman is a short work I chiseled out of a longer one. An updating of the classic romantic legend, it’s the story of a young woman visited by a time-traveling pop star seeking the one woman he can love. The novella form—not novel, not short story—seemed to work best for it. It’s been the right shape for some of the most famous stories of all time, from Heart of Darkness to To Kill a Mockingbird and beyond.
I’ve traveled through time myself to choose some other favorite novellas that meaningfully capture a period and place.
Speaking of psychoanalysis, like much of Stefan Zweig’s work, Fear was written at the dawn of the Freudian era, in 1913 (though it wasn’t published until 1920).
A married upper-class woman is blackmailed by the working-class girlfriend of her lover, and while the tale of her panic is sometimes just an illustration of the then-new concept of the subconscious, it’s riveting anyway.
In the fifties, it became the closest Roberto Rossellini ever came to making a film noir, with Ingrid Bergman.
A bourgeois housewife's affair is discovered, and a blackmailer turns her comfortable life into a nightmare of apprehension
Finding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother tedious after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover's former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband, meanwhile her husband seems to offer her numerous opportunities to confess and be forgiven. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear. Written in the spring of 1913, and first published in 1920,…
Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.
Like some other things I’ve been lucky enough to have published, The Flying Dutchman is a short work I chiseled out of a longer one. An updating of the classic romantic legend, it’s the story of a young woman visited by a time-traveling pop star seeking the one woman he can love. The novella form—not novel, not short story—seemed to work best for it. It’s been the right shape for some of the most famous stories of all time, from Heart of Darkness to To Kill a Mockingbird and beyond.
I’ve traveled through time myself to choose some other favorite novellas that meaningfully capture a period and place.
In Rachel Seiffert’s stunning 2001 novella set at the end of World War Two, a teenage girl leads her younger siblings through the ruins of a burning, defeated Germany, after the arrest of their Nazi parents.
This modern classic unearths something new from a tumultuous and much-dissected past. It redefines and gives new gravity to the term “coming-of-age.”
Don’t read it before bed, though—you might be too upset to sleep.
Now a Major Motion Picture: in Lore, Rachel Seiffert powerfully examines the legacy of World War II on ordinary Germans--both survivors of the war and the generations that succeeded them.
It is spring of 1945, just weeks after the defeat of Germany. A teenage German girl named Lore has been left to fend for herself. Her parents have been arrested by the Allies, and she has four younger siblings to care for. Together, they set off on a harrowing journey to find their grandmother. As we follow Lore on a 500-mile trek through the four zones of occupation, Seiffert evokes…
A giving heart must also be a receiving heart was a phrase that always stuck with me. We all need a little help from our friends, after all. And it should be a two-way street. Seeing healthy, giving, and loving friendships always makes a good read that much better. Friendships will always play an important part in the books that I write. Below is my list of the best Christian romance books with strong friendships.
The author has a great YouTube channel that offers writing advice for Christian authors. After getting so much value from her channel, I was happy to buy her first novel Free. It’s such a clever book that had me quickly rooting for the main character. She overcomes so much. And I found the process of the ship’s crew and captain slowly warming up to her to be heartwarming. It’s a great story of a person without a family finally finding one on the high seas!
17-year-old Ruth is used to being independent and trusting God to provide for her needs, even with the little protection life in the 17th century provides her. But when a strange turn of events lands her on a cargo ship with no immediate way off, what is Ruth to do? The sailors are rough and rowdy, but Ruth finds First Mate Leonard particularly intimidating. What is hiding behind Captain Edward’s passive nature? Will she ever be free? As the sailors face the trials of ocean travels, they realize their young servant holds a key to peace and happiness that they…
After being rejected in school, because I had to move with my family again and again, I never had really friends and knew how being left alone and rejected felt. So I put my nose into books and developed a love for writing. Since I didn’t know what to do with them, I left them alone when I married. After being diagnosed with cancer later in my life, I couldn’t go back to work, I remembered my love to write and read so I started to write short stories again. I want to help young people going through similar rejections and bullying, to lift them up, and take the negativity out of their minds.
I like sci-fi books as well, so I tried this one and it spoke to me. How strange creatures from a different planet and galaxy help a helpless man, not knowing who he was and where he was.
I didn’t expect but it was an amazing story
On a planet far, far away, a man awakes. Not knowing who he is and where he was, his existence was attacked by strange creatures. The people, if you can call them people, strange looking themselves, helped him to escape and call him Loren. Loren then found out, that these people are in trouble and he likes to help them. Love, life, hardship.
After a spaceship crashes into the planet of Tonath, the lone occupant survives and fights his way to sunlit part of the planet. When a passing freighter finds him, he's taken to the Western Starshift Institute of the Way, where the Teacher rules the sunlit part of the planet.
Tonath is a planet being torn apart by the forces of nature, and only the Teacher knows how to predict the movement of the stars and interpret the prophecies. Finding love and betrayal on the planet, the survivor also learns of the disputes arising from the teachings of the Greens and…
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
My wife suggested we try scuba diving while on holiday in Grand Cayman. We were already falling in love with the island, and the incredible experience underwater opened a whole new world to us. From that moment on, our yearly travels changed completely. Our destination choices were now based upon diving opportunities. That was twenty years ago. Today, I’m a certified divemaster with dives all over the US (including Hawaii), the Caribbean (including Cuba), Australia, and even Iceland. Throw in my sense of adventure as a former race car driver, motorcycle rider, and outdoor adventurer, and I had plenty of personal experiences to create the AJ Bailey series.
Kathy’s series – which I wish she’d continue one day – inspired me to include my passion for scuba diving in my novels. Her main character, Hannah Sampson, is a member of the Denver Underwater CSI team, who’s asked to help the police in the British Virgin Islands investigate a case. Needless to say, she stays on the island for the following books and becomes embroiled in hair-raising cases that challenge her above and below the water.
Kathy published her series at a time when very few novels centered around diving, and certainly didn’t include a female protagonist. I found her work transported me to the islands, and enthused me to create AJ Bailey and subsequently, Nora Sommer.
Murder runs deep in a thrilling new series. An Underwater Investigation featuring C.S.I. diver Hannah Sampson.
Summoned to the sun-drenched beaches of the British Virgin Islands, Hannah Sampson is fully prepared to face unknowable dangers beneath the crystal-clear waters of an idyllic paradise. But the possibility of murder runs deeper and darker than the sea itself. Her police commissioner's son-an expert diver and researcher-was found dead, pinned under the submerged wreckage of a cargo ship. Whatever the victim was looking for, he found.
Whatever he found was the death of him. Now Hannah must discover for herself what lies beneath-a…
I’m a historical and dual timeline novelist, and I sometimes think I love the research phase more than the writing phase. For each novel I start with a vague idea, then buy or borrow books to read around the subject in the hope that a story will gradually emerge. I was lucky with The Lost Sister in that a chance remark of my brother’s sparked an idea, and he had a large collection of Titanic books which he let me borrow.
The two previous books in this list had given me a little taste of Carpathia’s story, the ship that came to Titanic’s rescue and picked up all the survivors.
And then, after my book was published, a book blogger got in touch to say she’d been inspired by my book to find out more about Carpathia, and had bought this book by Jay Ludowyke which she recommended to me.
I bought it, read it, and realised there was another novel in this, one set mostly on Carpathia after the rescue… and so I wrote it. It’s to be published in November 2023!
Ludowyke’s book tells the whole story of Carpathia, not just that famous night. From how she was named, to how her wreck (she was torpedoed in the First World War) was discovered and identified, this book reads like a novel in itself, and I highly recommend it.
In the early hours of 15 April 1912, the Cunard steamship Carpathia receives a distress call from the new White Star liner Titanic. Captain Arthur Rostron immediately turns Carpathia northwest and sails full speed through the dark night, into waters laden with icebergs, on a rescue mission that will become legendary.
Almost a century later, Carpathia's wreck has finally been located. She's over 500 feet down and only a few divers in the world can attain these depths. Among them is Englishman Ric Waring's team.
In this captivating and intensively researched story, we follow the dual narratives of Rostron and…
I've always been fascinated by the toughest survivors, the ones where I say to myself, “I could have never got through that.” Then I’m curious about how they endured: what mindsets and techniques did they use to fight on? When I became a writer I focused on this niche, with my first book Ten Hours Until Dawn which was followed by several other true survival and rescue tales. I became obsessed with researching where the survivors made the correct decisions and how they got trapped by bad ones. When my book The Finest Hours became a Disney movie I was deluged with people sharing their own survival stories.
When sharks are circling your life raft, I do not recommend drinking seawater to quench your excruciating thirst. In Albatross, five people find themselves adrift at sea in a small life raft with no food or water. When one of the sailors drinks seawater we see how that can dehydrate the brain and cause hallucinations. Suddenly the sailor blurts out that he is going to get his car to get some beer, and he steps out of the life raft. The sharks are waiting.
Albatross is not only a story of mistakes made, but also of courageous decisions by two survivors, Deb Kiley and Brad Cavanaugh. It is hair-raising, insightful, and might just keep you off the water.
In 1982 the author and four companions got caught in a storm in a 58 foot yacht off the coast of North Carolina. For five days they kept alive without food or water in a tiny inflatable dinghy after the yacht sank. The first night was spent in the water under the upside down dinghy trying to keep warm, not learning until morning that the area was infested with sharks. Two of the boys drank sea water, went mad, climbed overboard and were never seen again. Meg, badly injured, died of exposure and gangrene. Brad and Debbie were rescued by…
Karl's War is a coming-of-age-meets-thriller set in Germany on the eve of Hitler coming to power. Karl – a reluctant poster boy for the Nazis – meets Jewish Ben and his world is up-turned.
Ben and his family flee to France. Karl joins the German army but deserts and finds…
Technology advances, scenery changes, but the human heart remains the same. As a writer, I hope to honor lives unnoticed or forgotten and have found that writing in verse affords me the truest, most uncorrupted pathway into the human heart. Each of the verse novels I’ve written or recommended here is spun from the strongest threads of time, place, and character. My hope is that the spare words within each book will build bridges across time and culture, and that those of us willing to open our hearts and cross these bridges will help create a more tolerant and peaceful world.
The Watch That Ends The Night tells the story of the Titanic through the voices of those who were there. I read this after I had written my own most recent book and was struck with how similarly Allan and I approached historical catastrophes. Both books are multi-voiced and contemplate the same issues of privilege and class distinctions. Like me, Allan chose to listen to nature and endow her with a voice of her own.
Audie Award, Distinguished Achievement in Production, 2012
Arrogance and innocence, hubris and hope - 24 haunting voices of the Titanic tragedy, as well as the iceberg itself, are evoked in a stunning tour de force.
More than 2,000 men, women, and children are on board. Here on the first-class promenade is millionaire John Jacob Astor, who hopes his return from Egypt with his pregnant teen bride will invite a minimum of media attention. And here, in the third-class common room, a beautiful Lebanese refugee, on her way to family in Florida, discovers first love. And there in the distance, shrouded…
