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Sam Bourne's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Sam Bourne recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sam Bourne's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Fatherland

It is twenty years after Nazi Germany's triumphant victory in World War II and the entire country is preparing for the grand celebration of the Führer's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as the imminent peacemaking visit from President Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Berlin Detective Xavier March -- a disillusioned but talented investigation of a corpse washed up on the shore of a lake. When a dead man turns out to be a high-ranking Nazi commander, the Gestapo orders March off the case immediately. Suddenly other unrelated deaths are anything but routine.

Now obsessed by the case,...
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Recommended by Sam Bourne, and 1 others.

Sam BourneMany good thrillers ask: What if … ? The question here is: What if Hitler had won? That is such a bold and interesting concept. It is true that others writers had played with this concept before, but Robert Harris brilliantly executed it and sketches in an entire world of early 1960s Hitlerite Berlin. (Source)

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2

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

A modern classic in which John le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart.

It is now beyond a doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once...
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Sam BourneThis is an example of the meticulously supreme thriller. John le Carré really is the master of the form, and any list of thrillers has to include that book. It’s a very emboldening book for thriller writers, because it teaches you not to underestimate the understanding of your reader. They can be pushed and pushed. It is an incredibly intricate plot and yet, if you write it well enough, as he... (Source)

Robert BaerLe Carré has the ability to add drama and colour. For classic espionage in a little town in Germany, you can’t do better than le Carré. (Source)

Andy BeckettI find the darkness in le Carré particularly interesting because it’s quite melancholic. It evokes a sadness about Britain and the establishment at that time. There’s a sense of the world closing in. He really captures that in the book. (Source)

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3

The Thirty-Nine Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)

A gripping tale of adventure that has enthralled readers since it was first published, John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps is edited with an introduction and notes by Sir John Keegan in Penguin Classics.

Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his London life - until a spy is murdered in his flat, just days after having warned Hannay of an assassination plot that could plunge Britain into a war with Germany. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay picks up the trail left by the assassins,...
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Frank Cottrell BoyceIt’s quite a good book, but it’s got one great idea, and Hitchcock ran with it. When adapting a book it’s much better to take the thing that’s brilliant about it and polish it. (Source)

Michael FarrHitchcock said of The Thirty-Nine Steps that it was a wonderful book to film because you didn’t need to do a storyboard, it was all there already. (Source)

Sam BourneIt is extraordinarily fast paced. A huge part of any good thriller is the chase, and this is very good on that. (Source)

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4

The Day of the Jackal

Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the  world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.

One  man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final...
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Ben ShapiroThe best action novel ever written. By a looong shot! (Source)

James TwiningIt’s very well-written in a way that perhaps my next choices aren’t, and it depicts France in the 1960s in an incredibly convincing way. (Source)

Sam BourneWhat makes the book compelling is that you are observing the mechanics of an assassin who is a really blank character. He is unnamed, apart from being called ‘the Jackal.’ He should be very blank, but it works because you buy into the idea of a traceless, faceless, ruthless killer. (Source)

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5

The Plot Against America

In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.
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Nate Bowling (Is Thankful For A/c)@Sifill_LDF @soledadobrien The first and best Philip Roth book I read was called "The Plot Against America." It's wild as hell to watch it unfold IRL. https://t.co/ZWLkHjs5a2 https://t.co/shcD2kJ3Zi (Source)

Steven AmsterdamThe best way to tell stories of horrific times is not through the central players amassing power, but through the lives of the people off to the side, simply trying to survive. (Source)

Sam BourneRoth’s what if? in this book is imagining that Roosevelt is no longer president, and Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist and anti-war politician, is president instead. So the idea is, What if America had stayed out of the war and was morally on the wrong side? (Source)

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