Morbid Nonfiction

Updated January 11, 2024
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A taste for poison : eleven deadly molecules and the killers who used them
Bradbury, Neil
Paper Book
"A fascinating tale of poisons and poisonous deeds which both educates and entertains." --Kathy Reichs A brilliant blend of science and crime, A TASTE FOR POISON reveals how eleven notorious poisons affect the body--through the murders in which they were used.
All the living and the dead : from embalmers to executioners, an exploration of the people who have made death their life's work
Campbell, Hayley
Paper Book
A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people--morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners--who work in it and what led them there. We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet...
From here to eternity : traveling the world to find the good death
Doughty, Caitlin
Paper Book
A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with "dignity." Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set...
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 butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She...
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...
The icepick surgeon : murder, fraud, sabotage, piracy, and other dastardly deeds perpetrated in the name of science
Kean, Sam
Paper Book
From a New York Times bestselling author comes the gripping, untold history of science's darkest secrets, "a fascinating book [that] deserves a wide audience" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Science is a force for good in the world--at least...
Working stiff : two years, 262 bodies, and the making of a medical examiner
Melinek, Judy.
Paper Book
The fearless memoir of a young forensic pathologist's "rookie season" as a NYC medical examiner, and the cases--hair-raising and heartbreaking and impossibly complex--that shaped her as both a physician and a mother. Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Judy...
Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers /
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."--Entertainment Weekly Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years,...
Cannibalism : a perfectly natural history
Schutt, Bill
Paper Book
"A masterful and compulsively readable book that challenges our preconceived notions about a behavior often sensationalized in our culture and, until just recently, misunderstood in the scientific world." --Ian Tattersall, Curator Emeritus, American Museum of Natural History, and...
Rabid : a cultural history of the world's most diabolical virus
Wasik, Bill.
Paper Book
A maddened creature, frothing at the mouth, lunges at an innocent victim--and, with a bite, transforms its prey into another raving monster. It's a scenario that underlies our darkest tales of supernatural horror, but its power derives from a very real virus, a deadly scourge known to mankind from...
Get well soon : [online electronic book] history's worst plagues and the heroes
Wright, Jennifer Ashley, 1986-
Ebook
A witty, irreverent tour of history's worst plagues--from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio--and a celebration of the heroes who fought them In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days...

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