Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

Updated June 7, 2026
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
This is your list in printable form. Simply print this page using your browser's print command.

Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The facemaker one surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
Replaceable you : adventures in human anatomy
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet...
The invisible kingdom : reimagining chronic illness
O'Rourke, Meghan
Paper Book
Drawing on her own medical experience as well as fifteen years of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O'Rourke's incisive new work speaks to an urgent subject: the epidemic scale of autoimmune disease in America (even greater with the advent of 'Long Covid')...
Empire of pain the secret history of the Sackler dynasty
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 100 BOOK OF THE CENTURY * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A TIME ALL-TIME 100 NONFICTION BOOK Updated with FOUR NEW MAJOR CHAPTERS illuminating the new developments in cancer...
Bad blood : secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup
Carreyrou, John
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos--one of the biggest corporate frauds in history--a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword.
All in her head : the truth and lies early medicine taught us about women's bodies and why it matters today
Comen, Elizabeth
Paper Book
Finalist for the 2025 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award USA Today Bestseller "All in Her Head accomplishes a remarkable feat of storytelling. By combining essential medical histories about women's bodies with all the narrative...
The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales
Sacks, Oliver W.
Audiobook
Smoke gets in your eyes : and other lessons from the crematorium
Doughty, Caitlin
Paper Book
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty--a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre--took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life's work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both...
The code breaker : Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race
Isaacson, Walter
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a "compelling" (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna...
The gene : an intimate history
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies--a fascinating history of the gene and "a magisterial account of...
The good nurse : a true story of medicine, madness and murder
Graeber, Charles
Paper Book
'...aside from the murders , Charles Cullen might have been a pretty good nurse...' The true story of the most prolific serial killer in US history, The Good Nurse is 'astunning book... that should and does bring to mind In Cold Blood' New York Times
The mind electric : stories of the strangeness and wonder of our brains
Anand, Pria
Paper Book
A history of the world in six plagues : how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Bonhomme, Edna
Paper Book
Unshrunk : how the mental health industry took over my life -- and my fight to get it back
Delano, Laura
Paper Book
Awakenings
Sacks, Oliver
Paper Book
The classic account of survivors of the sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I--and their return to the world after decades of "sleep." *  From the distinguished neurologist and the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife...
The sleeping beauties : and other stories of mystery illness
O'Sullivan, Suzanne
Paper Book
Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021'To compare any book to a Sacks is unfair, but this one lives up to it . . . I finished it feeling thrillingly unsettled, and wishing there was more.' James McConnachie, Sunday Times'A study of diseases that we sometimes say are 'all in the...
Rumbles : a curious history of the gut
Richardson, Elsa
Paper Book
The secret history of the body's most fascinating organ: the gut
Mapping the darkness : the visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep
Miller, Kenneth (Journalist)
Paper Book
'Fascinating, magisterially researched, and brilliantly written.' Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes Thirty-two days underground. No heat. No sunlight. 4 June 1938. Nathaniel Kleitman and his research student make their way down the seventy-one steps leading to the mouth of...
The puzzle solver : a scientist's desperate hunt to cure Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and save his son
White, Tracie
Paper Book
Based on a viral article, the gripping medical mystery story of Ron Davis, a world-class Stanford geneticist who has put his career on the line to find the cure for chronic fatigue syndrome, the disease killing his son.
Find this list online

https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/1918.2384/list/8087

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.