I Can't Believe It's Non-Fiction!

This ain't your grandparent's non-fiction.

Narrative and deeply engrossing non-fiction to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Updated August 11, 2023
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I heard you paint houses : Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran and closing the case on Jimmy Hoffa
Brandt, Charles
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller  --  #1 True Crime Bestseller The inspiration for the major motion picture, THE IRISHMAN. "The best Mafia book I ever read, and believe me, I read them all." -- Steven Van Zandt "Charles Brandt...
Acid for the children : a memoir
Flea (Musician)
Paper Book
With "virtuosic vulnerability" (The Atlantic), the iconic bassist and Red Hot Chili peppers co-founder pens a love letter to a youth spent wild in Los Angeles in his raw and riveting coming-of-age memoir. In Acid for the Children, Flea...
American predator : the hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century
Callahan, Maureen (Journalist)
Paper Book
Israel Keyes was one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to kill. He would break into a stranger's house,...
The Anthropocene reviewed : essays on a human-centered planet
Green, John
Paper Book
Goodreads Choice winner for Nonfiction 2021 and instant #1 bestseller! A deeply moving collection of personal essays from John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. "The perfect book for right now." -People <...
Buses are a comin' : memoir of a freedom rider
Person, Charles
Paper Book
A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward--written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers. At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement...
Catch and kill : lies, spies, and a conspiracy to protect predators
Farrow, Ronan
Paper Book
Now an HBO documentary series streaming on HBO Max.  In this instant New York Times bestselling account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests...
Chaos : Charles Manson, the CIA, and the secret history of the sixties
O'Neill, Tom
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NOW A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times)...
Cinema speculation
Tarantino, Quentin
CD
The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino. In addition to being among the...
Did ye hear Mammy died? : a memoir
O'Reilly, Seamas
CD
This heartwarming and hilarious family memoir shares what life was like growing up as one of eleven siblings raised by a single dad in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. After the untimely death of his mother, five-year old Seamas and his ten (ten!) siblings were left to the care...
Dirty pictures : how an underground network of nerds, feminists, geniuses, bikers, potheads, printers, intellectuals, and art school rebels revolutionized art and invented comix
Doherty, Brian
Paper Book
In the 1950s, comics meant POW! BAM! superheroes, family-friendly gags, and Sunday funnies, but in the 1960s, inspired by these strips and the satire of MAD magazine, a new generation of creators set out to subvert the medium, and with it, American culture. Their "comix,"...
Don't call it a cult : the shocking story of Keith Raniere and the women of NXIVM
Berman, Sarah
Paper Book
As seen in Season Two of the HBO docuseries THE VOW They draw you in with the promise of empowerment, self-discovery, women helping women. The more secretive those connections are, the more exclusive you feel. Little did you know, you just joined a cult. Sex...
Educated : a memoir
Westover, Tara
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
Empire of the summer moon : Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history
Gwynne, S. C.
CD
Few people realize that the Comanche Indians were the greatest warring tribe in American history. Their forty-year battle with settlers held up the development of the new nation. Empire of the Summer Moon tells of the rise and fall of this fierce, powerful, and proud tribe, and begins in 1836...
A fever in the heartland : the Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them
Egan, Timothy
Paper Book
The Roaring Twenties - the Jazz Age - has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in...
Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
Fink, Sheri.
Paper Book
One of the New York Times's Best Ten Books of the Year Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,...
Forget the Alamo : the rise and fall of an American myth
Burrough, Bryan
Paper Book
Every nation needs a creation myth, and Texas's myths bite deep. In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. The fight over the Alamo's meaning has become...
Gory details : adventures from the dark side of science
Engelhaupt, Erika
Paper Book
Infused with Mary Roach-style humor and science, this narrative illuminates the gross, strange, morbid, and outright absurd realities of our bodies, the Earth, and universe. Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National...
Gotham : a history of New York City to 1898
Burrows, Edwin G.
Paper Book
To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of...
Helter skelter : the true story of the Manson murders
Bugliosi, Vincent.
Paper Book
The #1 True Crime Bestseller of All Time--7 Million Copies Sold In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his...
Hollywood Park : a memoir
Jollett, Mikel
Paper Book
**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "A Gen-X This Boy's Life...Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel... In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain...
I'm glad my mom died
McCurdy, Jennette
Paper Book
* #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * MORE THAN 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD! A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor--including eating...
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New...
Know my name : a memoir
Miller, Chanel
Paper Book
Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller's breathtaking memoir "gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer,...
Lafayette in the somewhat United States
Vowell, Sarah
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and Unfamiliar Fishes, a humorous and insightful account of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette - the one Frenchman we could all agree on - and an insightful portrait of a nation's idealism and its reality.
Last call : a true story of love, lust, and murder in queer New York
Green, Elon
Paper Book
**WINNER OF THE EDGAR® AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME** A "terrific, harrowing, true-crime account of an elusive serial killer who preyed upon gay men in the 1990s." -The New York Times (Editor's Pick) "In this astonishing and powerful work of...
The last honest man : the CIA, the FBI, the mafia, and the Kennedys--and one senator's fight to save democracy
Risen, James
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  |  Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography | "Timely and long overdue... This book should be required reading."―Tom O'Neill, author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties...
The library book
Orlean, Susan
Paper Book
A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK A WASHINGTON POST TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 "A constant pleasure to read...Everybody who loves books...
A little devil in America : notes in praise of Black performances
Abdurraqib, Hanif
Paper Book
" "I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too." Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how...
Manson : the life and times of Charles Manson
Guinn, Jeff.
Paper Book
The most authoritative account ever written of how an ordinary juvenile delinquent named Charles Manson became the notorious murderer whose crimes still shock and horrify us today. More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among...
Missoula : rape and the justice system in a college town
Krakauer, Jon.
Paper Book
From bestselling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative about a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana -- stories that illuminate the human drama behind the national plague of campus rape Missoula, Montana, is a typical college...
Monsters : a fan's dilemma
Dederer, Claire
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and...
She said : breaking the sexual harassment story that helped ignite a movement
Kantor, Jodi
Paper Book
The instant New York Times bestseller. "An instant classic of investigative journalism...'All the President's Men' for the Me Too era." -- Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's...
The Sullivanians : sex, psychotherapy, and the wild life of an American commune
Stille, Alexander
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE The devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult. In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick...
Victim F : from crime victims to suspects to survivors
Huskins, Denise
Paper Book
In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men bound and drugged them, then abducted Denise. Warned not to call the police or Denise would be killed. Aaron agonized about what to do. Finally he put his trust in law enforcement and...
The Wager : a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager...
We keep the dead close : a murder at Harvard and a half century of silence
Cooper, Becky
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER Named One of The Best Books of 2020 by NPR's Fresh Air * Publishers Weekly * Marie Claire *...

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