I am reading Dongri to Dubai by S. Hussain Zaidi.
Growing up in Mumbai in the 1980s/90s, I remember reading news stories about the Mumbai gang wars.
This book covers that in great detail and as such qualifies as a genuine history book.
And yet, it reads like a potboiler. It is essentially unputdownable.
10/10
Red notice by Bill Browder, chiling
Longitude by dava sobel
I could not put down The Wager. Maybe not a thriller exactly, but the “will they make it?” suspense was brilliant.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing. I think that qualities as history
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer.
The Day of St Anthony’s Fire, John G. Fuller.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
In Harms Way by Doug Stanton. Only book I’ve read in one sitting. Could not put it down. What those sailors went through…just insane.
Erich Maria Remarque - Arch of Triumph
So good. A German doctor that fled to Paris during the Nazi occupation and works undercover as a surgion. One day he sees the Gestapo officer that killed his wife. A Cat and Mouse scenario begins.
Also beautifully written, cause Remarque 🙂
Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
I really enjoyed this one. I got turned on to it by a character in a John le Carré novel who was reading it. It’s a page turner. Herod was certainly a mob boss villain of epic proportions.
On a first date, when I walked into the lady’s house I noticed a Tom Wolfe novel on her coffee table. When I asked her what she thought of it she said it was “mind candy”. I’ve never forgotten that phrase.
A Higher Call by Adam Makos was awesome. It reads like a war movie.
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. It is about Mormonism. Trigger warning though, there’s some messed up stuff in that book. It’s definitely a heavy read.
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson. I was riveted throughout.
Descent Into Madness by Vernon Frolick, story of a manhunt for a mad trapper in the remote British Columbia wilderness in the ‘80s. Absolutely insane
Band of Brothers, while not exactly a thriller style setup is well paced and magnificent.
Shake Hands With The Devil by Romeo Dallaire, eyewitness account of the Rwandan Genocide
The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick, Custer and The Little Bighorn
The Tiger by John Vaillant, account of the hunt of a man eating tiger
Golden Spruce by John Valliant, the account of a killing of a tree
Devil In The Grove by Gilbert King