What to Read Next if You Liked A Spy Among Friends, The Dark Knight Returns, Where She Went, Humans of New York, or Wayfaring Stranger
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, by Ben Macintyre, author of Operation Mincemeat, bills itself as the true story of one of the 20th century’s longest-running acts of espionage: at the height of the Cold War, Ray Philby, head of MI6, was one of the most trusted men in Britain, but not even his best friend and fellow secret agent knew that throughout his career, Philby shared all of his secrets with Moscow. It’s unthinkable, and yet…it happened in the U.S., too. Spy: The Inside Story of How Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, by David Wise, paints a complicated portrait of the former FBI agent who was on the Soviet Union’s payroll for more than two decades before he was caught.
The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller, reinvented the Caped Crusader for the 1980s, emphasizing his vigilante nature and ramping up the political subtext in his bitter feud with Superman, portrayed as a fascist stooge for a hardline U.S. government. Still relevant decades later, it will serve as the basis for 2015’s Batman v Superman film. Next, see how Miller’s vision of the character has evolved over the years with Batman: Death of the Family, by Scott Snyder, a gripping, nothing-will-ever-be-the-same storyline from the current D.C. comics run.
Where She Went, by Gayle Forman, is the sequel to the supernaturally tinged If I Stay; the film adaptation of that YA romance, about Mia, a teen girl stuck in limbo after a brutal car accident who must decide whether she wants to return to the land of the living, hits theaters on August 22. The sequel picks up the story a few years later, abandoning the afterlife angst for the more general variety, this time from the point of view of Mia’s boyfriend, Adam, who channeled his anguish over their breakup into a tortured rock album. If you’re looking for another book that explores the mind of a troubled young man at the intersection of family tragedy, unrequited love, and rock n’ roll, The Piper’s Son, by Melina Marchetta, is a must-read.
Humans of New York, by Brandon Stanton, takes one of my favorite things on the internet—Stanton’s impromptu photos of New Yorkers in their native environment, accompanied by their revealing, never-less-than-fascinating off-the-cuff reactions to a total stranger asking to take a picture—and stuffs it in between two covers. The subjects of Talking Pictures, by Ransom Riggs, do their talking across decades: the book collects found photos given context by old inscriptions scrawled across the back.
Wayfaring Stranger, by James Lee Burke, has been praised as the author’s best book—and that’s saying something, considering he’s published more than 30 of them. His latest follows a Texas teenager from his fateful encounter with famed bandits Bonnie and Clyde, through a harrowing term of service in World War II, and into the high-stakes world of the oil business, offering up a kaleidoscopic view of seminal American myths in the process. It’s a book inhabited by the spirit of those fated, celebrated bank robbers, so why not follow it up with Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, by Jeff Gunn, the definitive take on crime’s most infamous doomed lovers?
What books have you been recommending lately?