Here are 100 books that Without Sanction fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have not served in the military nor been subject to a manhunt. However, I have been battling PTSD for almost 5 years. There are many, many misconceptions of PTSD in the media, and finding it portrayed accurately is a difficult task. My goal with Polaris was to first depict mental illness as realistically as possible, with all its ugly messiness. Secondly, the social commentary of a dystopian-sci-fi setting fascinated me. Polaris came about when I combined the two. In my own personal experience, most people do not understand the totality of PTSD and how it overtakes one’s life.
As one of the most unflinching, realistic depictions of PTSD in modern history, First Blood gave me shivers. It provides an intense dive into the psyche of someone traumatized by warfare and how messy and unpredictable one can become when attempting to adjust to civilian life. It may be hard for some to stomach.
From New York Times bestselling author, David Morrell, comes a classic thriller that introduced the character of Rambo, one of the most iconic action heroes of the twentieth century.
Called “the father of the modern action novel,” FIRST BLOOD changed the genre. Although the book and the film adaptation have similarities, they are very different, especially its unexpected ending and its greater intensity.If you’ve only experienced the film, you’re in for a surprise.
Once they were soldiers. Rambo, the ragged kid whose presence in town is considered a threat. And Teasle, the Chief of Police of Madison, Kentucky. Both have…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
When I retired from the service, I wanted to be done with big decisions and just focus on family. I’d had enough war-zone drama. I’m drawn to stories where the veteran finds he/she just can’t do that. My protagonist in my debut, Stable deals with this. He’s overcome so much…the loss of his son, the loss of an aircrew, and years of depression. Now that he’s “back,” he just wants to lead a normal life. I wanted to show you can pull the veteran from the battlefield, but it’s hard to quell his or her desire to continue to serve—and the inherent conflict of service before self or family remains.
I highly recommend Nick Petrie's The Drifter and his follow-on books in the series.
The protagonist, Peter Ash, struggles with the debilitating effects of PTSD. Despite his desire to escape from society, he finds himself drawn back into it after the suicide of a fellow Marine. As he helps the man's widow with home repairs, Ash stumbles upon a shocking discovery that thrusts him back into a society filled with deceit and intrigue.
What makes this novel stand out is Petrie's sensitive and deep portrayal of Ash's struggle with PTSD. Ash's experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have left him haunted by memories and struggling to adjust to civilian life. His white static, which he describes as a buzzing claustrophobia, is a constant reminder of the trauma he's endured.
But, as the reader will discover, Ash is a remarkably resilient character who is determined to do what's right—regardless of his personal…
The first explosive thriller featuring Peter Ash, a veteran who finds that the demons of war aren’t easily left behind...
“Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie’s Peter Ash is the real deal.”—Lee Child
Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his “white static,” the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars.
But when a friend from the Marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man’s widow…
My therapeutic journey with PTSD has been a long and bumpy road that I still work through to this day, close to fifteen years now. Given the silent suffering that so many go through, I feel that the more we talk about and advocate for seeking help the more people we can save. The common thread with my picks is resiliency. The characters face their symptoms and don’t give in to them. If a thriller novel can reach someone because they identify with the struggles discussed in the pages, then maybe that book can be the bridge to them finally getting the help they need.
I also said of Sullivan’s Sleeping Bear, “This guy gets it.”
In particular, Connor captures the internal, psychological symptoms of PTSD with his protagonist Cassie Gale, an Army veteran that experiences a soul-shattering trauma.
As a result, Gale withdraws into herself, isolates and seeks solitude away from all her friends and family, and misleads people on her wellbeing, mental state, and readjustment after the event.
What I found particularly intriguing about Sullivan’s debut novel was the dual aspect of both Cassie’s symptoms, and that of the buried emotions and memories of her dad.
As the plot unfolds and Cassie’s father Jim is pulled into the story, he experiences his own psychological symptoms as events from his service are recollected, all while wrestling with the undeniable panic of a parent worried sick over the fate of their child.
I again was surprised to learn that Connor wasn’t a veteran, as…
WINNER OF THE BARRY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST MYSTERY/CRIME NOVEL
"Sleeping Bear is...one of those rare novels that keeps getting better and better and better. Remember the author's name-Connor Sullivan." -James Patterson
A former Army veteran seeking solitude in the Alaskan wilderness after her husband's death finds herself a pawn in a deadly game with Russia in this white-knuckled and "heart-stopping thrill ride" (Chris Hauty, author of Deep State).
After her young husband's untimely death, Army veteran Cassie Gale decides to take a few days of solitude in the Alaskan wilderness before she starts her new job. But when she…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My therapeutic journey with PTSD has been a long and bumpy road that I still work through to this day, close to fifteen years now. Given the silent suffering that so many go through, I feel that the more we talk about and advocate for seeking help the more people we can save. The common thread with my picks is resiliency. The characters face their symptoms and don’t give in to them. If a thriller novel can reach someone because they identify with the struggles discussed in the pages, then maybe that book can be the bridge to them finally getting the help they need.
The one book on my list that doesn’t involve a military veteran, The Guilty One isn’t that much of an outlier as the protagonist is a law enforcement officer.
I thought it important to include amongst my picks not only for the PTSD symptoms present and expertly portrayed by Schweigart, but also for the reminder that a PTSD diagnosis is not relegated to veterans alone.
Military, first responders, and civilians alike that are exposed to and suffer from experiencing trauma are all susceptible to symptoms. PTSD doesn’t discriminate in who it affects.
What I really liked about Bill’s take was how he incorporated the well-documented physiological effect of the brain’s ability to protect the host in response to trauma.
In the case of his protagonist Cal Farrell, who is the first officer to respond to an active shooter event, he comes upon a scene so horrible that his mind closes…
A hero cop thwarts a brutal murder and can’t remember a thing about it. But memories return—and so do the nightmares in this breathlessly paced thriller for fans of David Ricciardi and Michael Connelly.
Every town needs a hero—and Detective Cal Farrell fits the bill. He stopped an active shooter six months earlier, and now he’s become the darling of the Alexandria press. The problem is that Cal remembers nothing from that day. He’s working with a psychiatrist to recover his memories, but hasn’t had much luck.
Then, on one of his morning runs, he is once again the first…
A large part of my career has been devoted to foreign affairs. Edgar Snow, Negley Farson, and others whom I read as a young man kindled my interest. I have reported from overseas and at one point developed a specialty in reporting connections between American communities and events overseas. I have published a number of foreign correspondents’ memoirs that were buried in achieves or have been out-of-print and ignored. Most recently I wrote a history of foreign reporting. So, one can say that I have made a career of enjoying books like these.
Though largely forgotten, Jack Belden is one of the best war reporters in American history.
A tormented man, he had PTSD before the term existed. While recovering from wounds sustained during the Allied invasion of Italy, he wrote Still Time to Die. He wrote, “My life, more than that of anyone I know, has been spent in lonely wanderings among the dreary wastelands of war.”
He lived a raw life with regular Chinese soldiers. Of his sensations during a shelling with them, he wrote, “I was not only tingling with delirious excitement, but, to my great astonishment, I realized that I was almost panting with a sexual kind of pleasure, and I found myself leaning against the wind, surrendering to the rough caress of the sand, pulsing and throbbing and thrilling to the crashing, tumultuous orchestration of the shells which were now beating the earth about us with a…
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been…
When I was four and a half years old, I found my mother passed out on her bedroom floor. She had overdosed—shortly after giving birth to my baby brother, and she went on to spend six months in a psychiatric hospital. While she was away, I remember sitting in the backseat of our car with my brother as my father drove us to the store when our car collided head-on with another vehicle. In the months that followed, I became parentless for a period that seemed like years. That experience set the stage for my lifelong interest in the impacts of childhood trauma. As a therapist, it also sparked my passion for healing others.
I love this workbook because it is straightforward in defining childhood developmental trauma. It explains the Autonomic Nervous System and how trauma stays stuck in the body today. I use diagrams and simple worksheets to explain why my clients feel the way they do.
I like that it explains that trauma is not just working out through the brain but includes the body, most importantly. I also believe that true healing from trauma has to include somatic body-based work, which this workbook explains.
Traumatic experiences leave a “living legacy” of effects that often persist for years and decades after the events are over. Historically, it has always been assumed that re-telling the story of what happened would resolve these effects.
However, survivors report a different experience: Telling and re-telling the story of what happened to them often reactivates their trauma responses, overwhelming them rather than resolving the trauma. To transform traumatic experiences, survivors need to understand their symptoms and reactions as normal responses to abnormal events. They need ways to work with the symptoms that intrude on their daily activities, preventing a life…
I am a private practice therapist who has treated adolescents for over 15 years. Since 2016, I’ve helped teens and young adults struggling with gender identity. I discovered, through working with hundreds of families and dozens of adolescents, that many teens develop gender dysphoria only after intellectually questioning their “gender identity.” I found this fascinating and have spent the last 10 years trying to understand this phenomenon. Through my work with parents and adolescents and as a podcast co-host on Gender: A Wider Lens, I’m exploring the following questions: How do individuals make meaning of their distress? What happens when we turn to culturally salient narratives about illness, diagnoses, and treatment pathways?
My favorite kinds of books are ones that challenge conventional wisdom in a way that feels intuitively familiar and true. This is how I felt while reading this book.
As a therapist, I know how capable and resilient people can be, but I also come into contact with prolonged suffering in my work. I really enjoyed reading about the heroic and remarkable people he profiled, and I loved how Bonanno weaves in science with personal narrative.
I felt like his examples and interviews really brought to life the data on resilience, and I got a ton of practical and useful ideas for how to respond to challenging situations, from big-T trauma to everyday difficulties.
After 9/11, thousands of mental health professionals from across the country assembled in Manhattan to help handle the almost certain avalanche of traumatized New Yorkers. Curiously, it never came. While plenty of people did seek mental health counseling after 9/11, the numbers were nowhere near expected.
As renowned psychologist George Bonanno argues, psychiatrists failed to predict the response to 9/11 because our model of trauma is wrong. Psychiatrists only study clinically traumatized people, and over time this skewed sample has led us to believe that trauma was the natural response to stress. But what about all the people who never…
I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
Her various HOT series are terrific, so when she decided to write a small-town romantic suspense story, I knew I’d be all in. In this first book of her Ghost Ops series, she takes her characters to the small town of Sutton’s Creek, and the result is fantastic!
I love the effect this small town has on these kick-ass heroes. They’ll do anything for the right woman, and as luck would have it, this small town has more than a few! I love how Blaze and Emma try to fight the attraction (for good reasons), but love conquers all!
Dead to their pasts. Ghosts. No family ties. No connections. Six men with a top-secret mission move to a small town where they have to navigate local life, protect their secret, and, above all, stay single. Former Hostile Operations Team soldier Blaze "Shadow" Connolly knows what it’s like to lose everything. He’s got nobody except his job and his team and that’s the way he likes it.But when he walks into a gas station during a robbery and locks eyes with Emma Grace Sutton, he knows he’ll do anything to protect the pretty girl with the blue glasses.ER doctor Emma…
My professional work has always been inspired by the personal journey I've gone on–which means that my interest in religious trauma stems from my own healing as well as client work and research. Previous research and therapeutic interventions have suggested atheism as a cure for religious trauma which is often unhelpful and can create just as much rigidity as someone experienced in a high control religion. I approach religious trauma as trauma–which means that resolving religious trauma can occur in the same ways that we use to resolve other trauma. Understanding religious trauma this way opens the door for a decrease in shame, more compassion towards self, and ultimately living a whole life.
Pete Walker is most well known for introducing the fourth “F” response when it comes to trauma: FAWN.
For me personally, growing up in an environment where submission and appeasement was key, fawning became a natural state I lived in. Pete’s work helped me understand Complex PTSD on a deeper level and gives incredible tools and interventions to the reader to help navigate through a process of healing.
I began reading science fiction when I was 8 years old and "borrowed" my father’s library books until, in defense, he got me my own library card. Not only have I spent decades reading SF, I’ve written it as well. As a veteran reader and writer with plenty of kill marks on my fuselage, I'm literally married to the SF mob (Grandmaster Robert Silverberg, is my spouse). I can both walk the walk and talk the talk. And after writing 9 SF novels including a Star Trek Book and reading uncounted SF and F tales, I still think science fiction and fantasy can be a literature of ideas illuminating the human condition.
Oh, the delicious snark of it all. Murderbot may—or may not—have a human heart, but what it does have is attitude with a capital A.
System Collapse focuses on the further adventures of the cyberbot security unit that has hacked itself free from dangerous behavioral controls and named itself Murderbot. The gender-free bot is suffering from PTSD resulting in memory lapses and odd behavior that endangers not only Murderbot but the humans they're protecting from being killed/enslaved by evil Corporate raiders and/or contaminated by deadly alien biotech.
Some of the funniest moments come when human characters try to get touchy-feely with Murderbot, much to their horror. Honestly, Murderbot would rather just watch soap operas with buddy/significant other, ART, the AI ship they live on. It helps to have read the previous 6 books to know who all the characters are and their histories.
The million-copy, New York Times bestselling Murderbot series is back in another full-length novel adventure!
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free…
