I’d been a preschool teacher and a children’s author for years before I decided to become a mom. I was pretty sure I’d kill it at motherhood, I mean, I knew all the songs and I had lots of books. I was always up for giving advice to the caregivers at my school, heck, I was the perfect parent before my son was born. I knew everything then. Not anymore. Thank goodness for books. Over the years, my child has asked some tough questions, read on…you’ll see. Do they sound familiar? If so, these books might help you find your footing as you go looking for answers.
“When we couldn’t go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, were they playing without me?”
It’s hard for me to put the last two years into context for my son. I was a little detached. I was busy thinking about the future, a “someday soon” when we could be around people, go to the movies, go to school, hug our friends…I feel like I missed nearly half of his life! This book is a reminder of what we’ve experienced, how we’ve changed, and how we got to the place we are now.
From Caldecott honoree LeUyen Pham, Outside, Inside is a moving picture book celebrating essential workers and the community coming together to face the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Something strange happened in 2020, just before the seasons changed. Everyone who was outside, went inside. Outside, it was quieter and different. Inside, we laughed, we cried, we baked, we exercised, we kept in touch... and we grew. We remembered to protect the ones we love and love the ones who protect us. We watched with admiration and respect as key workers risked their own wellbeing to help others. We knew…
I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
This is an amazing book if you want to understand that disease isn’t just medical, it’s also cultural.
Contagiousreally describes how culture influences how we understand illness and how that affects treatment and care of individuals, including who we blame and how we understand risk.
People like to think of medicine and science as being detached and objective, but this book shows that simply isn’t true.
How should we understand the fear and fascination elicited by the accounts of communicable disease outbreaks that proliferated, following the emergence of HIV, in scientific publications and the mainstream media? The repetition of particular characters, images, and story lines-of Patients Zero and superspreaders, hot zones and tenacious microbes-produced a formulaic narrative as they circulated through the media and were amplified in popular fiction and film. The "outbreak narrative" begins with the identification of an emerging infection, follows it through the global networks of contact and contagion, and ends with the epidemiological work that contains it. Priscilla Wald argues that we…
I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging.
I adore this book as it feels deeply woven with the legacy of Octavia Butler: gripping, socially engaged science fiction that is full of brilliant information about how to survive societal collapse.
I appreciate how adrienne shines a light on grief as it relates to the various social conditions that create hardship for folks. This systemic lack of care makes it hard for many folks to have their needs met in life, let alone have a dignified death. I gobbled this book up and was very sad to have finished it.
★ "It’s a strong precedent that will leave readers eager for more." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.
Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following…
As a child, my family and I would make scary movies to watch at our own annual family film festival. Horror has always been a passion of mine. The way horror can evoke emotions in you that you can’t otherwise access is a special kind of high. As a horror movie/game/book aficionado, I’ve tried to weave elements of horror into my stories. My favorite types of scary stories are the ones that would stand on their own, even if the ghosts were taken away. I am so passionate about horror with heart, which can be hard to find in a world of slasher movies and true crime.
I’ve always been fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials (my youngest daughter is even named Salem), and so, in my search for a good modern take on them, I stumbled across this book. The fact that it was based on a true story immediately drew me in.
Like other books on this list, this story isn’t outright horror. It’s subtle. Rather than using ghosts and violence to scare the reader, this book focused on mob mentality, hysteria, and bias in a way that was so real and relatable that it felt like this could actually happen to me or someone I know.
I think the most effective horror puts you into a situation that’s so familiar and plausible that it keeps you looking over your shoulder. In my opinion, people are always much scarier than ghosts, and so this book that studied mob mentality chilled me with just how easily…
A chilling mystery based on true events, from New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe.
It’s senior year, and St. Joan’s Academy is a pressure cooker. Grades, college applications, boys’ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends keep it together. Until the school’s queen bee suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class.
The mystery illness spreads to the school's popular clique, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s buzzes with rumor; rumor erupts into full-blown panic.
Everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Are…
I’ve always loved learning about the past. Whenever we travel for vacation, my family has become resigned to making a stop at a historical site, especially for Colonial America. It was no surprise to them that I set parts of my first published novel (and series) in 18th century North Carolina. Each novel on my book list is set in a different century and features ordinary people who, when thrown into extraordinary circumstances, respond with strength, courage, and grace. These historical “fish-out-of-water” stories remind us how much people have changed across time—and how they’ve stayed the same.
When I first read Fever 1793—set in Philadelphia during a yellow fever epidemic—I thought it was a well-written and thought-provoking glimpse into how people would respond in a crisis. After re-reading it post-pandemic, I would now add “prophetic.” Mattie is a typical grumpy teen who would rather have fun than work in her family’s coffee house. But there is a deadly fever rapidly spreading through the city. Desperation unleashes her inner strength, allowing her to prevail over disease, fear, food shortages, unscrupulous thieves, and well-intentioned but poorly-managed medical science.
I love thriller stories. I also love a variety of types of thrillers because there are so many ways for someone to face great challenges, overcome those hurdles, and achieve a major goal, all in the context of high stakes and fast-paced situations. It doesn’t matter if the story is related to crime, medicine, science, law, politics, espionage, etc. After experiencing such a diversity of thriller stories, including the books recommended below, I am passionate about creating my own stories, based on my life experiences and endless imagination.
The plot premise of an infectious disease outbreak is all too common among medical thrillers, but when you have a young investigator from the Centers for Disease Control looking into it and uncovering a shocking scheme, the result is a thrilling detective novel that is oriented in medicine, not just a medical thriller.
I especially loved how the text incorporates a hardboiled narrative tone in the spirit of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, something that is characteristic of crime fiction but not medical fiction.
Straight out of today’s hospitals and labs–and tomorrow’s headlines–comes a frightening, scalpel-sharp thriller from medical insider Joshua Spanogle. In an astounding debut, Spanogle takes us on an all-too-real race against time…as a young doctor enters the dark side of scientific research, desperate to stop a terrifying epidemic before it is too late….
In Baltimore’s St. Raphael’s Hospital, three newly admitted patients are among society’s most helpless citizens: female residents of Baltimore’s group homes for the mentally impaired, their bodies racked by a virus the likes of which no one at St. Raphael’s has ever seen.
Wayward is the sequel to Wanderers, which was my number one favorite read of 2022. These books are incredible for several reasons.
The voice Wendig employs is conversational and impactful, the themes are heavy yet hopeful, and the characters were so real and relatable that I still think of them often, though I finished the book back in January.
Oh, and the mystery at the heart of the plot is so compelling it made this 800+ page doorstopper fly by in no time. This is the first post-apocalyptic story I’ve read that left me feeling ultimately hopeful about humanity’s inherent goodness, and for that, it tops my list.
'Move over King, Chuck Wendig is the new voice of modern American horror' Adam Christopher __________________________________________________________________________
The thrilling sequel to the bestselling Wanderers, a 'career-defining epic [that] deserves its inevitable comparisons to Stephen King's The Stand'. (Publishers Weekly)
Five years ago, they walked across America to a destination only they knew. The sleepwalkers, as the rest of the country named them, were followed by their shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them. They finally stopped in Ouray, a small town of Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of human civilisation. Because the sleepwalking…
As a critical care doctor, I love pausing when taking care of patients in a modern ICU to reflect on how far we’ve come in the care we can provide. I want to be entertained while learning about the past, and so I seek out books on medical history that find the wonder and the beauty (and the bizarre and chilling) and make it come alive. I get excited when medical history can be shared in a way that isn’t dry, or academic. These books all do that for me and capture some part of that crazy journey through time.
The Ghost Map is the fantastic story of an important Cholera epidemic in London in 1854.
The book swept me along with its narrative, plunging straight into the fetid world of Victorian London. Johnson weaves together the stories of the people affected, and the desperate hunt by Dr. John Snow to understand the cause of the disease. He also provides fascinating descriptions of the dangers to life in a time before sewers, and the evolution of such systems that ultimately transformed city life.
I definitely look at toilets, pipes, and sewer grates differently after reading this book.
A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year
It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure-garbage removal, clean water, sewers-necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action-and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time.
When I was nine, I was chased by a dog in the woods. It was barking and drooling and seemed intent on attacking me. For all I know, that dog was somebody’s pet, but I was terrified. It took me years to get over a fear of dogs, and even longer to get over a fear of the woods. I suppose that’s why I’ve always gone back to the wilderness as a setting for my novels; I love stories that tap into my strongest emotions. I’m also a physician, and I like exploring what makes us vulnerable—and resilient.
I will admit I came to this book for the author. David Koepp is a renowned screenwriter whose credits includeJurassic Parkand Mission: Impossible, among many others. Screenwriters have to work within the confines of a 120-page format, so it’s no wonder that this novel moves at a lightning pace. I love that it features a deadly fungal organism that could end humanity, but the story is really about the three people desperately trying to contain it.
'Gruesome, terrifying, pulse-pounding' Stephen King
Shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller of the Year
'Frightening' Mail on Sunday
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction.
Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. And only Diaz knows how to stop it.
He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards - one an ex-con, the other a single mother.…
I love books about heroes, and there are no greater heroes than scientists who develop vaccines. Breathless is a gripping account of the race to produce the COVID-19 vaccine. If you want insight into the drama and dedication underlying science, read this book.
Do you wonder where Covid came from? Breathless provides insight into its source. Spoiler alert: it was probably NOT a lab accident.
David Quammen is a national treasure. Few authors can better reveal the excitement of scientific discovery. Read all his books, but read Breathless first because so much depends on our ability to prevent or treat new infectious diseases. And heed his last, terrifying sentence: “There are many more fearsome viruses where SARS-CoV-2 came from, wherever that was.”
The story of the worldwide scientific quest to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
Breathless is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be…
