We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

The novel Anxious People is a mostly-comic novel that helped me, as a writer, think through how comedy is delivered. the kid hit the dad on the head, hes unconscious. the third boy, max, theres something wrong with him, psyco. the brother of the girl in the house got her cell phone and managed to make a call to the police but had to hang up Yes, I think you do. If you have a rigid, inflexible approach to problem solving I think you shut down a lot of avenues of resolution. So you need to come across as someone who is able to adapt to the circumstances and be open to dealing with the issues that are important to this person. Much like with Demolition Angel, I have to admit that I was skeptical about Hostage, one of Robert Crais' standalone books. Like with Demolition Angel, I had nothing to worry about.This book was fast-paced with something new happening in every chapter. I enjoyed that the storyline was straightforward making it easy to follow. I enjoyed Crais’ writing. It is high quality without being overly descriptive. Three thugs botch a convenience store robbery and a man is shot. Now they're on the run and hole in a wealthy man's home, who happens to be there with his son and daughter. Chief of Police in this small, sleepy town, Jeff Talley, is a former SWAT and hostage negotiator who is battling personal demons from a bad negotiation years prior in LA. Now, he's thrust into the very thing he was hoping to escape, and until the Sheriffs can get there, it's all on him. A determined FBI agent hunts a sadistic serial killer in this “steamy” (Kirkus Review) Romantic Thriller with a “masterful plot” (The BookLife Prize) by New York Times bestselling author Toni Anderson.“Think of the best mystery thriller you’ve ever read, and I guarantee COLD SILENCE will surpass it!” —⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Goodreads review. I am an optimist. I jump out of bed in the morning ready to read and write. With my dog and cat by my side and a cup of coffee in hand, I lose myself in whatever I am working on. I am deeply curious about a gamut of subjects and constantly challenge myself to learn more. I am persistent and not afraid of hard work. Nature and animals are my bottomless well of inspiration and joy. I very much believe life is a journey and I try to enjoy each step. And these kinds of techniques are relatively new. The old way of doing it was to go in and take down the bad guys whatever the cost.

Audiobook: What do you get when you mix three men, two of them brothers and the other a psychopath, who decide to rob a convenience store in a sleepy suburban neighborhood; a local chief of police, Jeff Talley, ex-LAPD hostage negotiator trying to recover from a hostage situation that went horribly wrong; and a house where the robbers take refuge just happens to be where a mob accountant lives? A really good story. Adam is a detective, and Mina is a flight attendant who is working a high-publicity flight from London to Sydney. The plane has not been in the air very long before Mina starts getting clues that something is afoot. She soon receives a terrifying note from someone on the flight who has figured out exactly what it would take to force Mina to comply with their plan. Enter Jeff Talley, a former SWAT team negotiator with a troubled past who now just wants to be police chief in a quiet little suburb. This case turns out to be a living nightmare to say the least; frankly, much of the suspense in this book follows from his own anguish as the case takes an awful turn when his own family is threatened by mobsters, who of course don’t want their affairs revealed. While the book ends with a somewhat inexplicable set of final killings, the getting there was so filled with tension we could hardly bear to end each reading session. The clever plot thrills for sure, but the alternating narrators of the story – from the cops, to the villains, to the victims – makes for picturing the story for us in graphic detail; at times we’re nearly as scared as they are. I am a Full Professor of Leadership within the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. I am the recipient of the 2020 Research Excellence Award. My research, fundedby the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, is international in scope. I am also the founder of the Equitable Leadership Network at the University of Ottawa.Hostage is the tale of several hostage situations. The Smith family are held hostage by Dennis Rooney and the gang after their robbery, Jeff Talley is held hostage by his own past, and... well, I hold off on mentioning the hostage situation in the book. This is the one and only book I have read by this author but based on this I'm not sure I would be prepared to offer a second chance. I found it took me a long time to read despite me usually finishing a book in a day or two. I just couldn't get into it at all! I found it boring, dragged out and a bit of an anti climax none of it really made a great deal of sense! A claustrophobic thriller set over twenty hours on one airplane flight, with the heart-stopping tension of The Last Flight and the wrenching emotional intensity of Room, Hostage takes us on board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

the cop in charge was a hostage negotiator but quit his job after the last hostage killed his wife, son and self. he was unable to pull himself out of his depression and his wife and daughter had hoped he would. he moved to a small town,...now where the hostages are in the house with the 3 boys. Talley is a great lead character, plagued with doubts and concerns for his estranged family. The villains are well done, a believable bunch of fairly clueless criminals, although there's much more to Mars than originally indicated. For more than a month, Fung lived in that hole, which was barely tall enough to stand up in, nursing her injuries, praying and writing in a notebook. Under an Afghan Sky is the gripping tale of Fung’s… When three young thugs rob a convenience store, they hole up in a family home. Only it's not a normal family home. The owner is an accountant who works for the Mafia. When the Mob get wind of this, it's only a matter of time until the sparks fly and casualties are taken, with Talley at the forefront of the entire situation.Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing.

Yes, Jim Botting is a very close friend of mine and a colleague in the FBI. Jim’s stories are based out of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, where he worked on a number of very interesting and high-profile cases. The book gives the reader a really good glimpse into a day in the life of an FBI agent working on the streets. He is very good at setting the stage and sharing with the reader what it is like to be an FBI agent. This memoir is one of them. In 2008, Amanda Lindhout began her career as a reporter by traveling to Somalia. On her fourth day, she and another journalist were abducted and held for ransom.As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself visiting its exotic locales. At the… Ann Patchett’s writing is always sublime but her characters in this book are unforgettable. She stages a hostage situation in an undisclosed South American country. Over time, the young terrorists and the group of international strangers find a way to live and even thrive together. They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past. What about the techniques used in your next book, Negotiating Hostage Crises with the New Terrorists by Adam Dolnik and Keith Fitzgerald?