For some GA tales, I recommend reading:
Flying Stories, by Hal Stoen
Hal was a corporate pilot who flew a Cessna 421C Golden Eagle for a living.
His book is available on Amazon (for Kindle) and iTunes (iBooks).
Author’s website: Stoenworks
Best to avoid Amazon for “André Turcat – Concorde – Essais et battailles”.
Plenty of copies here and it’s a useful website for out-of-print books.
I have nearly finished Fate is the Hunter.
It’s a great book.
It was set in the early days of aviation – 1930s onwards – where very little was known about the hazards, weather services were nothing compared to what we know today, and – he was a civilian pilot in WW2 – loads of people got killed simply due to being let loose in high perf planes with poor training.
Brilliant descriptions of the various characters he encountered, and most of us would recognise a lot of them at their airport bar 
Currently enjoying Air Vagabonds – thanks @ToniK ( post 09)
I second Peters remarks about Fate Is The Hunter, read it a couple of weeks ago. Other good books that haven’t been mentioned are:
Nevil Shute – Slide Rule
Richard Bach – Nothing by Chance
In German:
Wolff Heckmann – Haie fressen keine Deutschen (Report of a guy who flew with a Falke from Germany to Australia – approx. 100h after getting his license)
Dieter Schmitt – Nordpolflug (I am currently reading this. Dieter writes about his North Atlantic Flights, his records, etc.)
Karl Theodor Haanen – Ein Segelflieger, Robert Kronfeld. (Story about a famous jewish glider pilot and his pioneering flights thermalling and flying with thunderstorms. He later moved to the UK to get away from the Nazis.)
Dieter Hassenstein – Bussard im Aufwind (Novel about early soaring. One of the first aviation Books I read as a kid.)
One of my favourites, although it’s more war aviation but great stories about pilots and talks a lot about the german perspective of the air war, and it’s heroes.
Adam Makos: A Higher Call
Peter wrote:
loads of people got killed simply due to being let loose in high perf planes with poor training.
One person that I rented airplanes from at KOAK when I lived there, Lou Fields in case you knew him, had been a US Navy aviator (no H). He started his carreer on Corsairs, then moved on to fighter jets during the Korean war… He retired in the late 60s, converted his military pilot’s license to civilian and started a flight school.
He told me lots of stories from his military days. One of them was that he had been ordered to fly a twin to fetch some supplies at a remote base. It did not matter that he pointed out that he had never flown a twin in his life. Orders were orders. He had however heard that there was something called asymmetry that could kill you. He spent the whole night reading the POH and the next day completed the mission. When he converted to civilian ratings, for the ME checkride he was asked by the examiner if he knew what the “critical engine” was. That concept was unknown to him, so instead of fessing up he answered: “Whaddaya mean? Hell, they’re both critical!” He got his ME.
I have just finished Fate is the Hunter.
As mentioned above, it is set in the 1930s-1950s era, and is written from the POV of a very hard working commercial pilot who flew just about everything to just about everywhere.
In the end, after maybe 30 years, and having lost so many colleagues in often inexplicable accidents, he decided it is time to quit.
The book makes one realise that the old saying, which some like to ridicule, that every line in Part 23 was written in blood, is pretty well true.
Ernest Gann wrote a load of other books. Has anyone read any of these?
Peter wrote:
The book makes one realise that the old saying, which some like to ridicule, that every line in Part 23 was written in blood, is pretty well true.
Ernest Gann wrote a load of other books. Has anyone read any of these?
Only one, which I happened to find in a local library – “The Magistrate”. (Gann is not easy to find in Swedish public libraries.). I didn’t think it was very good.
But “Fate is the Hunter” is, as you say, brilliant. It is easily the best aviation fiction I’ve read. My favourite part is the SAR episode in Canada.
