Reddit reviews City of Thieves: A Novel

They literally are novelists.

City of Thieves is an exciting thriller/coming of age book set in Leningrad during the siege of World War 2. Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but its a fun and clever page-turner.

City of Thieves by David Benioff. Hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, it's also cited as a major inspiration for the video game The Last of Us.

Everyone in this comment thread should read City of Thieves!

http://www.amazon.com/City-Thieves-Novel-David-Benioff/dp/0452295297

In that case I strongly advise the beauty killer series.

Loved this one, City of Thieves. From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over and co-creator of the HBO series Game of Thrones, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.

The collected short stories of Sherlock Holmes and all the Agatha Christie books are also something I think every one must read.

David Benioff was such a fantastic author. He doesn't write novels anymore. I know I'm bringing on the down votes but this whole GoT thing has sidetracked him from what he does best and I'm really disappointed. City of Thieves was a fantastic book set in Russia during WWII. I've heard he's trying to get it made into a movie.

This is extremely obscure, but I thought James Thackara's The Book of Kings was pretty fascinating. It tracks a bunch of college friends of different nationalities in 1930s Paris through WW2. The Amazon reviewers seemed either to love it or hate it -- and I understand why -- but I would say it's well worth reading, particularly as it covers a lot of events/perspectives that don't make it into most WW2 novels (the Eastern Front, the fall of France & the French Resistance, the attitudes of Algerians fighting for France and of anti-Nazi Germans fighting for Germany) . . . all in all, an unusual and intriguing book.

Also: City of Thieves by David Benioff, one of the showrunners of HBO's Game of Thrones.

Two (OK, three) come to mind:

Railway Man, by Eric Lomax

Railway Man, on Amazon

An American captured by the Japanese in (I think) Indonesia during WWII, and forced with other prisoners to build a railroad, and survive a Death March. He's also tortured for information. The story of his sheer survival is fascinating, but what's really amazing was the surprising forgiveness that emerges.

The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz

The Long Walk, on GoodReads for a change

"The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India." It's also quite moving.

Finally, a more recently written WWII tale (no, I don't have a thing for war stories - these are the ones that occur to me) during the Siege of Stalingrad:

The City of Thieves, by David Benioff (the screenwriter).

City of Thieves
It's really really good!

City of Theives. Great book.

He recently put out (another) book that should mollify your concerns if ~250 amazon reviewers are to be believed: http://www.amazon.com/City-Thieves-Novel-David-Benioff/dp/0452295297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267611982&sr=8-3

Something like City of Thieves by David Benioff? I'm not sure what I liked about it, the setting and storytelling maybe.

City of Thieves - David Benioff

Envy - Sandra Brown