Where is your nonfiction section please.
If new nonfiction this year was a little lackluster, I did feel more enthusiastic about the backlist titles I read throughout the year. It was one of these that was my absolute favorite and the best book I read this year: Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova - Kassabova returned... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum (Amazon / Book Depository) The Poisoner's Handbook came up in Nonfiction November last year, when Silver Button Books mentioned it as an exceptional example of nonfiction that reads like fiction. I was surprised, as I wouldn't guess a book involving chemistry in any form would be so readable,... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Forest City Killer, by Vanessa Brown (Amazon / Book Depository) Author, bookstore owner, and local historian of London, Ontario Vanessa Brown spent five years researching a series of unsolved, decades-old homicides in her quiet hometown. *Keith Morrison voice* Well, mostly quiet, that is: London had the unofficial and unenviable title of the "serial killer... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Crimes of Paris, by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler (Amazon / Book Depository) The disappearance of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre stunned Parisians, who had long dismissed any impossible task with the remark that doing so 'would be like trying to steal the Mona Lisa.' The central defining event in The Crimes of... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Last Pirate of New York, by Rich Cohen (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Rich Cohen's father told him unusual bedtime stories: gangster tales. He opens his account of a murderous New York pirate by explaining his fascination with this subject, then allowing the story to take over in this concise account of... Continue Reading →
Book review: Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca (Amazon / Book Depository) Newly told stories of women who have faded into the annals of history despite significant contributions from their life's work are becoming an increasingly popular, welcomed trend. Author Brad Ricca's Mrs. Sherlock Holmes covers one such story - that of Grace Humiston, a... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Trial of Lizzie Borden, by Cara Robertson (Amazon / Book Depository) Lizzie Borden's is a story that's persistently intrigued us for over a century. This latest nonfiction treatment, coming on the heels of multiple recent novels, a TV movie and series, a work of YA nonfiction, and a feature film shows that's... Continue Reading →
Book review: Midnight in Peking, by Paul French (Amazon / Book Depository) After reading a footnote briefly referencing the murder of a young English expat in Peking (now Beijing), author Paul French woke up the next morning with the strong conviction that there was a deep and strange story behind it that needed telling. Midnight... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Lady in the Cellar, by Sinclair McKay Book Depository Number 4, Euston Square, seemingly so prosperous, well-run and attractive, was a boarding house filled with unease; a house that was restless at night; a house with secrets. Soon it would seem like a gigantic doll's house, open to examination by the entire... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Kill Jar, by J. Reuben Appelman Amazon Over about a year spanning 1976-1977, at least four children were killed in Detroit's Oakland County by a serial killer clunkily dubbed the Oakland County Child Killer, or OCCK. The case remains officially unsolved, but as J. Reuben Appelman lays out in this true crime... Continue Reading →
Book review: Blood & Ivy, by Paul Collins Amazon On November 23, 1849, shortly before Thanksgiving, Dr. George Parkman entered Harvard's Medical College to visit a tenant of his, the college's chemistry professor, John White Webster. He was never seen again. A familiar figure in and around Boston, Dr. Parkman's disappearance grabbed plenty of news... Continue Reading →
Book review: Little Shoes, by Pamela Everett (Amazon / Book Depository) I noticed this book was coming out after reading Piu Eatwell's take on Elizabeth Short's infamous murder, Black Dahlia, Red Rose. In that book, Eatwell repeatedly references the profiling work of Dr. Paul De River, a psychiatrist who, before psychologically profiling and interviewing Dahlia suspect Leslie... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 