Reddit mentions of Specter of the Past (Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn #1)

Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn. It's where I started, and in my opinion some of the best published. What it did better than anything else was capture the adventure and excitement of the star wars movies. It also introduces a good number of characters that you will end up reading about later if you continue to read the books. After that you can read Kevin J. Anderson's trilogy, and then start picking up the singles, like Truce at Bakura, Courtship of Princess Leia, the one with the jedi hutt and luke has a girlfriend ghost. If you decide to skip all those and only read the Thrawn books also read the Thrawn duology which ties up a lot of the stuff from the trilogy that is left open. It isn't left open in a bad way, there is just more stuff that could happen. You will eventually get to the New Jedi Order stuff and then everything else that happened after that, but that is beyond the scope of my recommendations. Also, the links are for the first books, I figure you can figure out the sequels if you end up buying the first books. Also, you can get them for like a dollar at your used book store so don't get them from amazon.

edit: Also, if you have any questions feel free to ask, I read all of the books published by bantam as a child and half the new jedi order series before I gave up and started reading "real" science fiction. Don't take that the wrong way, I enjoyed the star wars books, sometimes one just needs to diversify! I should re-read the thrawn trilogy. :-D

The Thrawn Trilogy:

1. Heir to the Empire
   
2. Dark Force Rising
   
3. The Last Command
   
   The Hand of Thrawn duology:
   
   
4. Specter of the Past
   
5. Vision of the Future

flabbergasted

I decided to go and finish my master's, despite having 2 young babies! Best of luck to you!

I'd love to have more Star Wars books to read this summer:

Scoundrels is a new book

OR,

These two are have been on my wishlist for awhile: Hand of Thrawn 1 and Hand of Thrawn 2.

Thanks for the contest!