Where is your nonfiction section please.
We Keep the Dead Close, by Becky Cooper (Bookshop.org) I complain a lot, A LOT about the spate of true crime books in the last few years where an author with no or minimal connection to a crime they find interesting writes a book about it that's also memoir, and inserts themselves into the story... Continue Reading →
The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, by Mark Bowden (Amazon) Unspeakable Acts, edited by Sarah Weinman (Amazon) Two new books of long-form true crime nonfiction are out this month, and they're both pretty good. Let's get into it. First up is gifted narrative nonfiction author Mark Bowden's The Case of the Vanishing Blonde. My introduction... Continue Reading →
Book review: Savage Appetites, by Rachel Monroe (Amazon / Book Depository) For the past few years, as the US murder rate has approached historic lows, stories about murder have become culturally ascendant...whether our tastes tended toward high-end HBO documentaries interrogating the justice system or something more like Investigation Discovery's Swamp Murders. (Or, as was often... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker (Amazon / Book Depository) Do not listen to the TV news checklist of what to do, or the magazine article's checklist of what to do, or the story about what your friend did. Listen to the wisdom that comes from having heard it all by... Continue Reading →
Book review: Remembering Satan, by Lawrence Wright (Amazon / Book Depository) Journalist Lawrence Wright is one of my favorite nonsense-busters. It just doesn't get past him. And his books are so well-written that even when they're dealing with the eye-rolling (but also very sad) "Satanic Panic" of the late 80s/90s, they're meticulous and brilliantly laid... Continue Reading →
Book review: All that Remains, by Sue Black (Amazon / Book Depository) As the product of a strict, no-nonsense, Scottish Presbyterian family where a spade was called a shovel and empathy and sentimentality were often viewed as weaknesses, I like to think my upbringing has made me pragmatic and thick-skinned, a coper and a realist. When... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Dark Heart, by Joakim Palmkvist (Amazon / Book Depository) At summer's end in 2012, an older, miserly farmer went missing from his farm in the Swedish countryside. The surrounding region is dubbed the "dark heart of Smaland," in reference to its traditional conservatism and religious background. Palmkvist points out that it's an... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Vienna Woods Killer, by John Leake (Amazon / Book Depository) John Leake, an American writer who lived nearly a decade in Vienna, wrote this definitive account of Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Unterweger's is quite the interesting story, not least because the crime of serial murder is far from common in Austria. Combined... Continue Reading →
Book review: Columbine, by Dave Cullen (Amazon / Book Depository) Anyone reading here knows I'm a huge fan of narrative (or creative) nonfiction, a genre that can encompass a lot, but the key element is nonfiction that uses narrative literary structures, styles and concepts similar to those used in fiction. Books like Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Other Side, by Lacy M. Johnson (Amazon / Book Depository) The short version: Lacy Johnson was kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend and held prisoner in a soundproofed basement he'd constructed solely for the purpose of raping and brutally killing her. He didn't succeed in killing her. This book is about that event, how it... Continue Reading →
Book review: Avery, by Ken Kratz Grim and plain - that was the nature of these truths. They may not be as exciting as conspiracy theories, but they do have the virtue of being supported by facts. Former Wisconsin special prosecutor Ken Kratz is kind of a sleazebag and he knows it. In 2010, his professional and... Continue Reading →
A southwest view from the shoreline of Lake Michigan in Muskegon, Jane's hometown, by Darwin Smith Jr. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons Book review: Jane: A Murder, by Maggie Nelson (Amazon / Book Depository) "You know, for a world that demands direction, I certainly have none. Will I be a teacher? Will I... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 