Books I have read for researching novels and recommend

Here are some non-fiction books that I've used in my researches and can recommend.

Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains Technically complex, but if you've learned everything The Weather Channel can teach you, you might move on to this! Dr. Bluestein is tops in his field.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why. Amazing, a page-turner of a book that might also help you survive a disaster. Which type are you? A leader? Someone who freezes? Read this and find out.

Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado The personal stories in here were ones I found very touching. It influenced my novel Storm, helping me understand more about what it feels like to be right there when the thing is screaming right over your head.

The New Madrid Earthquakes, Revised Edition The book on the 1811-12 New Madrid quakes. To some people, the reviews tell me, it was dull reading, consisting as it does of a lot of primary sources quoted at length, but it's meticulously researched and probably has every important primary source included, everything important that anyone wrote at the time of the earthquakes (which was, of course, before photography could record it). And I was fascinated by every word.

The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers. Dr Ali Khan, formerly of the CDC. Fascinating look into the life of a real life disease researcher who responded to infection disease outbreaks all over the world for many decades.Witty and dramatic and informative. My favorite of all the pandemic books I read.

National Geographic Prehistoric Mammals. Beautiful illustrations, minimal text, but really worth it for the drawings by Mauricio Anton.