Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

Updated June 7, 2026
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

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The lady's handbook for her mysterious illness : a memoir
Ramey, Sarah
Paper Book
"A best memoir of 2020" --BookPage The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head--but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are...
The facemaker : a visionary surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize | Named a best book of the year by The Guardian "Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." --Erik Larson, author of...
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...
Destiny of the Republic A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Millard, Candice.
Ebook
The inspiration for the Netflix series Death by Lightning - now streaming! * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The extraordinary account of James Garfield's rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy, from the bestselling author...
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
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From...
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE ...
0101814072159
614.58 P926H
Paper Book
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot"...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, adapted as a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is "an extraordinary achievement" (The New Yorker)--a magnificent,...
Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers
Roach, Mary.
Ebook
A New York Times science bestseller from "America's funniest science writer" ( Washington Post ), this "quirky, funny read offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical profession" ( Wall Street Journal ). With a...
Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family
Kolker, Robert
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY * The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope 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,...
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.
Paper Book
In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife...
Smoke gets in your eyes : and other lessons from the crematory
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...
Brain on fire : my month of madness
Cahalan, Susannah.
Paper Book
A gripping memoir and medical suspense story about a young New York Post reporter's struggle with a rare and terrifying disease, opening a new window into the fascinating world of brain science. One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a...
I contain multitudes : the microbes within us and a grander view of life
Yong, Ed
Paper Book
The New York Times Bestseller From Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin--a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived...
Gulp : adventures on the alimentary canal
Roach, Mary.
Paper Book
"America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity...
The cure for women : Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the challenge to Victorian medicine that changed women's lives forever
Reeder, Lydia
Paper Book
"Valiant and timely .... reintroduces its subject as a hero for this moment." ―The New York Times How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood--and the brilliant doctor who defied them ...
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...
And the band played on : politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic
Shilts, Randy.
Ebook
Upon its first publication more than twenty years ago, And the Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigative reporting. An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed...
The poisoner's handbook : murder and the birth of forensic medicine in Jazz Age New York
Blum, Deborah
Paper Book
Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." --The New York Observer "The Poisoner's Handbook breathes...
The ghost map : the story of London's most terrifying epidemic--and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world
Johnson, Steven
Audiobook
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O....
Forensics : what bugs, burns, prints, DNA, and more tell us about crime
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers we have, whose novels have captivated millions of readers worldwide with their riveting narratives of characters who solve complex crimes and confront unimaginable evil. In the course of researching her bestselling novels McDermid has become...
The great influenza : the epic story of the deadliest plague in history
Barry, John M.
Paper Book
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled...
The good nurse : a true story of medicine, madness, and murder
Graeber, Charles.
Paper Book
The mesmerizing basis of the movie starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain⁠--a "stunning book...that should and does bring to mind In Cold Blood"--takes you inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, whose 16-year long "nursing" career left as many as 400 dead....
Crisis in the red zone : the story of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, and of the outbreaks to come
Preston, Richard
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013-2014 Ebola epidemic   "Crisis in the Red Zone...
The mind electric : a neurologist on the strangeness and wonder of our brains
Anand, Pria
Paper Book
Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Named a Best Book of Summer by The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Publishers Weekly, and Book Riot The Observer (London)'s Summer Reads Select In this...
A history of the world in six plagues : how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Bonhomme, Edna
Paper Book
An "incredible, humane, insightful" (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind's battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines--in the vein of Medical Apartheid and ...
Unshrunk : a story of psychiatric treatment resistance
Delano, Laura
Ebook
One of NPR's 2025 "Books We Love" "Delano's story is compelling, important and even haunting. . . . Her memoir evokes Girl, Interrupted for the age of the prescription pill. . . . In Unshrunk, she tells her own story, and she tells it powerfully." --Casey Schwartz,...
Bellevue : three centuries of medicine and mayhem at America's most storied hospital
Oshinsky, David M.
Paper Book
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of...
The Black Angels : the untold story of the nurses who helped cure tuberculosis.
Smilios, Maria
Paper Book
Winner of the Christopher Award 2024 NPR Science Friday Best Summer Beach Reads 2024 Gotham Book Finalist 2024 NASW Science in Society Journalism Award Finalist 2024 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize Finalist 2024 "An incredible story...the writing is phenomenal." -...
Twelve patients : life and death at Bellevue Hospital
Manheimer, Eric.
Paper Book
In the spirit of Oliver Sacks and the inspiration for the NBC drama New Amsterdam, this memoir from a Medical Director of Bellevue Hospital looks poignantly at patients' lives, highlighting the complex mind-body connection. "As intensely involving as any scripted...
My lobotomy : a memoir
Dully, Howard
Audiobook
A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of twelve.Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered."In 1960," he writes, "I...
Do no harm : stories of life, death, and brain surgery
Marsh, Henry
Paper Book
The Instant New York Times best seller! Riveting. ... [Marsh] gives us an extraordinarily intimate, compassionate and sometimes frightening understanding of his vocation. - The New York Times Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize Shortlisted for both the...
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...
A fatal inheritance : how a family misfortune revealed a deadly medical mystery
Ingrassia, Lawrence
Paper Book
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction Named a best book of the year by Amazon, NPR, and Kirkus Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate,...
How to survive a plague : the inside story of how citizens and science tamed AIDS
France, David
Paper Book
A New York Times 2016 Notable Book The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic--from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague. A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the...
The Doctors' Riot of 1788 : body snatching, bloodletting, and anatomy in America
McPhee, Andy
Paper Book
Throughout the seventeenth century, medical lecturers demonstrated human anatomy by dissecting a cadaver while surrounded by students. After the Revolutionary War, though, instructors realized that they needed many more cadavers to serve a growing number of medical students. Enter the...
Death's acre : inside the legendary forensic lab the Body Farm where the dead do tell tales
Bass, William M.
Audiobook
The killer of little shepherds : a true crime story and the birth of forensic science
Starr, Douglas P.
Paper Book
A riveting true crime story that vividly recounts the birth of modern forensics. At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, known and feared as “The Killer of Little Shepherds,” terrorized the French countryside. He eluded authorities for years...
Patient H.M. : a story of memory, madness and family secrets
Dittrich, Luke
Paper Book
"Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King"* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M., a man who forever altered our understanding of how memory works--and whose treatment raises deeply unsettling questions...
The occasional human sacrifice : medical experimentation and the price of saying no
Elliott, Carl
Paper Book
The Occasional Human Sacrifice is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For...
The naked lady who stood on her head : a psychiatrist's stories of his most bizarre cases
Small, Gary W.
Paper Book
"Stories of human behavior at its most extreme....With humor, compassion, empathy, and insight, Small searches for and finds the humanity that lies hidden under even the most bizarre symptoms." --Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind A psychiatrist's stories of...
Smile : the story of a face
Ruhl, Sarah
Paper Book
* A People Best Book of the Year * Time and The Washington Post's Most Anticipated List * Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence * From the MacArthur genius, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and playwright, this "captivating, insightful...
The mystery of the exploding teeth : and other curiosities from the history of medicine
Morris, Thomas
Paper Book
"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018 One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018 This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in...
The other Dr. Gilmer : two men, a murder, and an unlikely fight for justice
Gilmer, Benjamin
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A "mesmerizing" (The New York Times Book Review) true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal--an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life...
The sleeping beauties : and other stories of mystery illness
O'Sullivan, Suzanne
Paper Book
In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a conta­gion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches and...
Hysterical : a memoir
Bassist, Elissa
Paper Book
SEMI-FINALIST FOR THE 2023 THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR *  "A fiery cultural critique." --Kirkus Reviews  *  "...a powerful, beautifully written, and utterly important book."--New York Journal of Books...
The red market : on the trail of the world's organ brokers, bone thieves, blood farmers, and child traffickers
Carney, Scott M.
Paper Book
"An unforgettable nonfiction thriller, expertly reported....A tremendously revealing and twisted ride, where life and death are now mere cold cash commodities." --Michael Largo, author of Final Exits Award-winning investigative journalist and contributing Wired...
Sick : a memoir
Khakpour, Porochista
Paper Book
A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Reivew, and LitHub. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 * Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018  *  Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books  * GQ Best...
The perfect predator : a scientist's race to save her husband from a deadly superbug: a memoir
Strathdee, Steffanie
Paper Book
A harrowing memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life--and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in...
Black Death at the Golden Gate : the race to save America from the bubonic plague
Randall, David K.
Paper Book
For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin--a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience,...
Rumbles : a curious history of the gut, the secret story of the body's most fascinating organ
Richardson, Elsa
Paper Book
The fascinating--and often secret--history of the body's most fascinating system: the gut. The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent, inconspicuous, and content. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy, often...
The genome odyssey : medical mysteries and the incredible quest to solve them
Ashley, Euan A.
Paper Book
In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent,...
Brainstorm : detective stories from the world of neurology
O'Sullivan, Suzanne.
Paper Book
A leading neurologist recounts some of her most astonishing, challenging cases, which demonstrate how central the study of epilepsy has been to our understanding of the brain.   Brainstorm follows the stories of people whose medical diagnoses are so strange even their...
Kill shot : a shadow industry, a deadly disease
Dearen, Jason
Paper Book
An award-winning investigative journalist's horrifying true crime story of America's deadliest drug contamination outbreak and the greed and deception that fueled it. Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: the fungus Exserohilum rostratum. The death count: 100 and...
Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness
Cole-Adams, Kate
Paper Book
"Cole-Adams blends research, reflection, and memoir to try to grapple with the meaning of consciousness . . . Cole-Adams presents a lyrical journey through the vital question of what it means to be human." --Kirkus Reviews Anesthetize: to render insensible
One doctor : close calls, cold cases, and the mysteries of medicine
Reilly, Brendan M.
Paper Book
An epic story told by a unique voice in American medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician. An epic story told by a unique voice in Ameri­can medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in...
Mapping the darkness : the visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep
Miller, Kenneth (Journalist)
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2024 ASJA BOOK AWARD, BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY  NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER   NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE SELECTION From award...
Good blood : a doctor, a donor, and the incredible breakthrough that saved millions of babies
Guthrie, Julian
Paper Book
When James Harrison was a 14 year old boy in Australia in the 1950s, he had emergency surgery and received a transfusion, which saved his life. Even though he hated needles, James felt a debt to the unknown strangers who'd given him such a gift and vowed to return the favor. Little did he know...
Intern : a doctor's initiation
Jauhar, Sandeep
Paper Book
Intern is Sandeep Jauhar's story of his days and nights in residency at a busy hospital in New York City, a trial that led him to question our every assumption about medical care today. Residency--and especially the first year, called internship--is legendary for its brutality....
Blood Farm : the explosive big pharma scandal that altered the AIDS crisis
McGoogan, Cara
Ebook
"A stunning investigation." ­­  -- Publishers Weekly  How a miracle treatment turned deadly and changed the course of the AIDS crisis. By the mid 1980s, AIDS hysteria was so rampant...
The puzzle solver : a scientist's desperate quest to cure the illness that stole his son
White, Tracie
Paper Book
"A renowned geneticist races against time to diagnose a malady that landed at his door... A complex, well-related story of medical detective work." --KIRKUS     At the age of twenty-seven, Whitney Dafoe was forced to give up his life as a photographer...
The memory thief : and the secrets behind how we remember : a medical mystery
Aguirre, Lauren Seeley
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD "Aguirre writes clearly, concisely, and often cinematically. The book succeeds in providing an accessible yet substantive look at memory science and offering glimpses of the often-challenging process of...
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