Fiction

A short, fast-paced classic about survival, instinct, and transformation. The story follows Buck, a domesticated dog stolen from his home and thrust into the brutal world of the Yukon during the gold rush, as he adapts and ultimately returns to his primal nature.

Three dollars for everything Jack London wrote, on Kindle. Includes well-known stories like The Call of the Wild and White Fang, alongside other good but less common ones like The Sea Wolf (about a boat, not an actual wolf) and A Daughter of the Snows.

Casey Glass (episodes 7 and 46 of our podcast) and Miguel Zeran (episodes 74 and 75 of the podcast) both swear by this book series. Vehemently. Think of it as special operators in space with swords. It's based on a future where society is ruthlessly divided by color-coded castes. Darrow, a low-born miner on Mars, is crushed by the oppression of the Golds, the elite ruling class. After a devastating loss, he infiltrates their world and undergoes a brutal transformation to join their ranks with the sole purpose of bringing them down from the inside. It's brutal, cerebral, fast-paced, and funny. 

An epic historical novel based on the life of Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s most famous samurai. Loosely based on the story of the real person, but within a finctionalized narrative.

A dystopian classic that imagines a future built on comfort, pleasure, and control at the expense of individuality and freedom. It’s about a society engineered for stability through genetic manipulation, conditioning, and constant distraction. Published in 1932, but still feels relevant.

All of Dostoevsky’s books are excellent, but this one is Jon’s favorite. A deep, complex novel about innocence, morality, and the corrupting influence of society. The central character is Prince Myshkin, whose kindness and honesty clash with the greed, manipulation, and moral decay around him.

A sweeping tale of betrayal, imprisonment, and calculated revenge. The basis of this story was inspired by Dumas’ father, who was a general in Napoleon’s army and was eventually betrayed and imprisoned without trial (read The Black Count for that story). Here, the fictional Edmond Dantès transforms from a wronged young sailor into a master of strategy and disguise, seeking justice against those who destroyed his life.

A sprawling science fiction epic that became one of the most influential series ever written. Herbert builds a complex universe centered on the desert planet Arrakis, where control of a resource called spice shapes the fate of empires. Part political thriller, part ecological meditation, the series focuses on power, prophecy, and the unintended consequences of human action.

An adventure story on themes of destiny, obsession, and the cost of the quest that combines fantasy, western, horror, and post-apocalyptic fiction.

One of many good books by Clavell. Set in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Clavell wrote this by drawing on his own experience as a prisoner. The book follows an American corporal who thrives in the underground economy of the POW camp, with strong themes of survival, power, and morality. It’s an excellent treatise on human nature and what we can lose in the process of adapting and surviving. 

A short but dense story of colonialism, greed, and the darkness within human nature. Describes the journey of a man named Marlow up the Congo River in search of the mysterious Kurtz, using the voyage as both a literal and symbolic descent into moral and psychological wilderness. A classic critique of imperialism and a study of how power can corrode the soul.

A highly engaging, fast-paced survival story grounded in real science. Mark Watney is stranded alone on Mars as he uses ingenuity, engineering skills, and dark humor to stay alive long enough for rescue.

Follows a broad cast of characters, starting with a small crew caught in the middle of a solar system–wide conspiracy, as humanity expands beyond Earth. Known for its grounded science, complex characters, and escalating scope. It’s as much about human nature as it is about space travel.

A near-future thriller set in a drought-stricken American Southwest where water rights are the ultimate currency. Tense, violent, and uncomfortably plausible.

A speculative fiction trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam) that imagines a near-future world undone by genetic engineering, corporate greed, and environmental collapse. Weaves together multiple perspectives and timelines to show both the lead-up to and aftermath of a man-made apocalypse.

A gritty, survivalist tale based on the true story of frontiersman Hugh Glass. Mauled by a grizzly and left for dead, Glass endures staggering hardship in his quest to return to civilization and confront the men who abandoned him.

A darkly funny, surreal collection of stories that satirize work, consumer culture, and human absurdity.

Saunders’ debut collection, mixing dystopian settings, absurd corporate cultures, and dark humor that is very funny if that’s your thing (it’s Craig’s thing). The stories and novella are about characters struggling to keep their humanity in environments defined by greed, decay, and indifference. 

An interesting aspect to this book is that Brooks is affiliated with the Modern War Institute at West Point and the Atlantic Council, where he often uses his zombie stories as low-stakes, fictional proxies to model real-world issues like disasters. The book itself is written as an oral history of a global zombie pandemic, told through interviews with survivors from every corner of the world. Brooks uses the zombie outbreak as a lens for exploring politics, culture, and human resilience, creating a story that feels eerily plausible despite its premise.

It’ll be interesting to see how the ideas in this book play out over the next ten years or so. This is a near-future military thriller that imagines how a conflict between the U.S. and China could escalate into a global war. Written by a decorated combat veteran and a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. It’s a cautionary tale about great-power rivalry and a plausible scenario for how miscalculation can spiral into catastrophe.

A historical novel set during the silver boom in Virginia City, Nevada, told through the eyes of Val Trevallion, a self-possessed Cornish miner who came to the US after a tough childhood. L’Amour blends real events with fiction, following Trevallion as he navigates the opportunity and lawlessness of the Comstock Lode, and fights to build a future. More expansive and historically grounded than many of L’Amour’s westerns. One of Craig’s favorite books as a kid. Trevallion served as one of his models for how to suffer patiently in the pursuit of a long-term plan.

An often funny satire of middle-class conformity in 1920s America. Follows George F. Babbitt, a prosperous real estate salesman whose comfortable life is built on shallow values and social approval. As Babbitt begins to question the emptiness beneath his success, the novel becomes a critique of materialism and a study of how hard it is to break free from societal expectations.

A formative movie and novel for anyone growing up in the late 90s, looking at themes of identity, alienation, and rebellion against consumer culture. Superficially it’s about a man whose dissatisfaction with his sterile, corporate life leads him into the underground world of bare-knuckle fighting and the chaos that follows, but there are deeper themes around purpose, mindfulness, and the tradeoff between comfort and happiness. “The question, Raymond, is what do you want to do before you die?”

Probably Palahniuk’s best novel outside of Fight Club, this is a darkly comic horror story built around a “culling song” from an African folktale that can kill anyone who hears it. It follows a journalist who discovers the song while investigating a series of crib deaths, then teams up with an unlikely group to track down and destroy every copy.

A modern fable that challenges assumptions about civilization, culture, and what it means to live well.

One of those entertaining books that becomes hard to put down. This is a modern picaresque (meaning it follows somebody on a quest or journey), following two young men across the ruins of Leningrad during the Nazi siege. David Benioff, novelist, screenwriter, and later a showrunner on HBO’s Game of Thrones, uses an episodic structure and colorful encounters to balance grim historical detail with sharp, irreverent humor. The story moves quickly, with moments of absurdity and vulgarity punctuating the bleakness. It’s a portrait of friendship, survival, and moral compromise in war. The picaresque style here, with its chain of loosely connected adventures and morally ambiguous protagonist, sits alongside works like Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between, William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, and many of Bill Bryson’s travelogues, where the journey itself becomes the frame for a series of revealing encounters.

The Power of One is a coming-of-age novel set in mid-20th-century South Africa, where racial segregation and political turmoil form the backdrop for one boy’s fight to shape his own destiny. Orphaned young, “Peekay” endures brutal boarding schools, unlikely friendships, and hard lessons from mentors ranging from a German pianist to an African boxer. His journey blends grit, intellectual curiosity, and athletic ambition into a single driving belief in the power of one person to make a difference. This is a highly engrossing book that I’ve ended up gifting to people quite a few times over the years.

Shantaram follows Gregory David Roberts, an escaped Australian convict who builds a new life in the underworld of 1980s Bombay. Based loosely on his own experiences, Roberts takes the reader through slums, mafia dens, Bollywood sets, and guerrilla camps, mixing crime, romance, and philosophy into a sprawling tale. The novel is richly detailed but also highly self-aggrandizing, presenting the narrator as an almost mythic figure at the center of every drama.