Book suggestions needed

[Pixelated]

I have a SIL who's in the medical profession. I want to get her some books for Christmas but obviously anything involving sickness, plagues, death and so on are not exactly what she's looking for right now ....

Anybody got any ideas for light-hearted books ... humour ... 'cozy' mysteries ... and so on ... all suggestions would be welcome. I've got the names of a couple of romance novelists; I read the blurb on the backs of these novels and it made me fear for my blood sugar levels but thankfully I'm not the one who'll be reading the books. I've got her "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" which I've read and which is one of the weirdest books I've encountered in quite some time.

[Kristev]

Who are her favorite authors?

[Ironclad Alibi]

For fiction I suggest Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. It is an excellent story that takes place on a bullet train. I found it to have a lot of humor just from the situations the characters find themselves in.

Five killers on a bullet train from Tokyo are competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a massive Japanese bestseller.

*SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BRAD PITT AND SANDRA BULLOCK*

Satoshi looks like an innocent schoolboy but he is really a viciously cunning psychopath. Kimura's young son is in a coma thanks to him, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard.

Nanao, the self-proclaimed 'unluckiest assassin in the world', and the deadly partnership of Tangerine and Lemon are also traveling to Morioka. A suitcase full of money leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will get off alive at the last station?

A huge bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

If she likes history I recommend "Forget The Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth" by Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford, and Bryan Burrough. This book is a history of the formation of Texas which explains how much slavery had to do with it. If it wasn't for American settlers wanting to keep slaves to farm cotton, Texas might not have happened.

[Pixelated]

Who are her favorite authors?

Last I heard she was a major fan of Danielle Steel ... or, in my brother's words, "books where men are scum and women suffer." I won't buy her any DS books only because I have no idea what she already has, or at least has already read (and no point asking brother, he doesn't know either ... really helpful, he is). Beyond that, I don't know.

For fiction I suggest Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. It is an excellent story that takes place on a bullet train. I found it to have a lot of humor just from the situations the characters find themselves in.

Five killers on a bullet train from Tokyo are competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a massive Japanese bestseller.

*snip*

Thanks, I will look into that!

[Kittish]

You might try giving her one of the Discworld books, if she's even a little bit into science fiction/ fantasy and if she enjoys parody.

[Kristev]

Then try asking her if any author compares to Steele. Make it sound as if you were trying to get into it but didn't like the Steele book you picked up and wondered if someone else was as good.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Last I heard she was a major fan of Danielle Steel ... or, in my brother's words, "books where men are scum and women suffer." I won't buy her any DS books only because I have no idea what she already has, or at least has already read (and no point asking brother, he doesn't know either ... really helpful, he is). Beyond that, I don't know.

OK, this may be a bit of a tough one to find, but "Naked Came the Stranger" by Penelope Ashe.

The story - radio morning talk show host discovers her husband/co-host is having an affair and goes on a spree of wild sexual adventures with many men as revenge.

The background - "Penelope Ashe" is the pen name for two dozen writers from Newsday, each handling a different chapter, with instructions to make it the book intentionally bad and sleazy. It was organized by columnist Mike McGrady after he interviewed writer Harold Robbins, who claimed he was better than Shakespeare (because he was selling more books than Shakespeare at the time). McGrady decided to test the publishing industry, to get a terrible book on the shelves just because it's full of sleaze. It worked, it was published and had decent sales before the entire writing crew appeared on an episode of the "The David Frost Show". After that, the book made it to the NYT Best Seller List for 13 weeks.

Before the true author(s) were revealed, they convinced the wife of one of the writers to appear on television talk shows as "Penelope Ashe" (if I recall correctly, she was also a writer who had been rejected by publishers because her work wasn't racy enough). She would appear in a full-body leapord print leotards and say things like 'what I'm writing is the sexual norm in American' and 'your virginity is nice thing to have if you're 14'.

THEN give your sister a copy of the 1970 Mike McGrath book "Stranger Than Naked, or How to Write Dirty Books for Fun and Profit" which detailed the hoax.

[Nunavut Pants]

Hard to go too far wrong with "The Martian" by Andy Weir! Yes, the one that was made into a movie. Lots of snarky humor, sometimes dark, but more often just silly. (The protagonist coins a new unit, and calls it the "pirateninja"!)