Fans pick 64 books like Monday Mourning

I thought I should include a book you have no chance of finding without dredging the second-hand book warehouses in Hay, Wales. (Which is where I found it). Like my protagonist, I had no idea about forensic medicine. But I couldn’t begin my studies in this day and age of CSI and DNA. I had to find a textbook that my Dr. Siri might use to solve cases back in the seventies. This was it, plus hundreds of gruesome photos for your coffee table. Like a true scientist, Dr. Simpson affords the dead not a shred of dignity.  

Nobody does gore with more charm than the British, and Becket loves his blood and guts. His victims are barely recognizable. But I selected this novel mainly for its setting at a body farm. I have a card in my wallet offering my organs when I have no further use for them. But the farm is peopled with volunteer cadavers; those who have agreed to donate their bodies for forensic studies. Offering up a live heart is one thing. But you’d have to sign off ownership of the whole kit and kaboodle to science once that heart stops beating. It’s nice to think my body has some use when I’m done with it.

If only half of Cook’s medical exposures were true, we would probably never voluntarily go to a hospital again. But his forensic pathologists (a married couple team) go out of their way to prove him right. And in this 2008 thriller there are enough warnings about looming pandemics to make a reader wonder why covid came as such a surprise. The cadavers told us to be wary.

You don’t necessarily have to like an author to admire their grasp of the subject matter and few writers have a better slab-side manner than Cornwell. She knows her stuff and you can perhaps forgive her the smartarsery that she can’t resist. But she does go out of her way to give the victims and their families closure. 

Anyone who has ever worked in the food or hospitality industry—as a cook, a waitress, a hostess, a barista, or otherwise—can identify with this book.

The restaurant business is a different beast, and Anthony Bourdain took a huge risk in writing this and burning bridges with his bosses and coworkers. But in doing so, he unlocked the universal hidden language that food and hospitality workers share.

As a former hostess/waitress myself who spent most of her college years with a part-time job at IHOP and the Golden Waffle, I could relate to a lot of what Bourdain experienced working in NYC, especially with minority groups and how they were treated during that time. He was a huge inspiration to a lot of people, including me. 

One of the main characters in this book, the love interest actually, is on a quest to make the perfect chicken broth. Not art, exactly, but an act of creation. The multiple iterations and the constant tweaking of the recipe comprise a deep dive into an artist’s process as they strive to make the most perfect version of the thing in their head. That thing could be a painting, or a novel, or in this case, broth. This isn’t the main storyline, but it’s a significant side story and an indication of the author’s off-kilter take on space opera. All set in an imaginative world and the creative crucible of a high-end restaurant. Bonus points for the found family and community elements.

I couldn’t imagine what this book could be about with a title like this, but I enjoy Cat’s short stories so I took a leap of faith. I’m glad I did.

You Sexy Thing is the name of a sentient bioship that believes it is being stolen. Fast-paced and action-packed with great characters, You Sexy Thing also has depth–found family, personal ethics, and a pirate king bent on revenge. Immensely entertaining.

It doesn't matter that it was patently phony: The glamour that was Tinseltown in Hollywood's golden age was impossibly romantic and utterly irresistible. Much of it had to do with the social lives of movie stars, and in particular the shenanigans they got up to in swanky nightclubs where they danced, courted, and made merry. Jim Heimann is a superb chronicler of Los Angeles's architectural and cultural past, and this beautifully illustrated book is crammed with images of the likes of Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall patronizing such swell spots as Mocambo, the Trocadero, Ciro's, the Coconut Grove, the Player's Club, and many others. They're all gone now, but this collection of hundreds of photos of the clubs, inside and out, and the patrons, dressed as if for a royal wedding, brings them back to vibrant life.

This story expertly weaves together the tensions of a struggling family, a faltering business and a natural disaster that pushes them all to consider new ways of being. I was especially intrigued by the attempt of the characters to save wildlife after an oil spill in Louisiana. In addition, the stories of characters outside of the family provided a variety of points of view about what was happening.

The spirit of the characters encourages me to remember that there are always choices and new options if I’m willing to explore them.

Romeo & Juliet retellings are, in my opinion, the absolute hardest ones to bring anything new to, but Le’s own voices portrayal of Vietnamese culture smashed all my preconceptions and turned what’s often a dry, predictable format into something so insightful and compelling it genuinely took my breath away. With real, authentic teenage protags facing real, contemporary issues, we get an insight into the turmoil of the lives of ‘ordinary’ teens far removed from the ‘glossy’ veneers we’re often presented in YA fiction. A Pho Love Story speaks a unique, powerful truth – and brings a breath of fresh air not only to the original but also to the genre as a whole. (Caution: parts of this book will make you extremely hungry!)