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Overbooked: a resource for readers

Providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction

Overbooked Book Lists

Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction

Page Modified: June 19, 2009

Updated as time allows...

Page-turning Nonfiction

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

  • Oath: The Remarkable Story of Surgeon's Lfe Under in Cheyna
    Author: Baiev, Khassan
    Publisher: Walker $ 26 ISBN: 0802714048 Date: 2003
    starBookliststarPW
    In The Oath, a heroic Chechen doctor relates his harrowing experiences in the line of fire to bear witness to this international calamity, and illuminates his remarkable people and their culture.
    Updated 9.09.03
  • Blue Blood
    Author: Conlon, Edward
    Publisher: Riverhead $ 26.95 ISBN: 1573222666 Date: 2004
    starKirkusstarBookliststarPWstarLJ
    With brio and a thrilling literary style, Conlon depicts his life on the force--from his first days walking a beat in the South Bronx to his ascent to detective. The pace is relentless, the stories hypnotic, the scope nothing less than grand.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 4.5.04
  • The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
    Author: Larson, Erik
    Publisher: Crown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0609608444 Date: 2003
    starKirkusstarPWstarBooklist
    In a thrilling narrative showcasing his gifts as storyteller and researcher, Larson recounts the spellbinding tale of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and its devious creators. A blend of Ragtime and Silence of the Lambs, The Devil in the White City is Larson at his best.
    Suggested Reading: Holmes: Scarlet Mansions by Allen Eckert (novel) and Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer by Harold Schechter.
    Links: Chicago World's Fair - Hypertext | Interactive Guide
     Web Book | Holmes Article
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars
    Updated 2.28.02
  • Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
    Author: Leblanc, Adrian
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0684863871 Date: 2003
    starPW
    The result of over ten years of immersion reporting, Random Family charts a tumultuous decade in which girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.
    Updated 12.16.02
  • Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
    Author: Patchett, Ann
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060572140 Date: 2004
    starKirkusstarBookliststarLibrary Journal
    Tender but brutal, this portrait of unwavering commitment shines light on the little explored world of women's friendships through the author's relationship with critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 5.20.04
  • Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
    Author: Roach, Mary
    Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393050939 Date: 2003
    starKirkusstarPW
    In her droll, intimate voice, Roach conducts an oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of bodies postmortem.
    Updated 2.24.03
  • Name All the Animals: A Memoir
    Author: Smith, Alison
    Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743255224 Date: 2004
    starKirkusstarLJ
    A story of grief and secret love, of a family holding on to the memory of a lost child, Name all the Animals is an extraordinary memoir about a girl who learns to define herself beyond the death of her brother.
    Updated 3.1.04
  • Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
    Author: Sullivan, Robert
    Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582343853 Date: 2004
    starKirkusstarPWstarLJ
    Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting. The author of A Whale Hunt now turns the lowly rat into the star of the most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant book of the season.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Nature
    Updated 2.2.04
  • Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
    Author: Tucker, Neely
    Publisher: Crown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0609609769 Date: 2004
    starPWstarBookliststarLJ
    In the heart of conflict-torn Zimbabwe, an American couple fights to save the life of--and ultimately adopt--an infant girl who had been abandoned beneath an acacia tree on the day she was born.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 1.15.04
  • Blood Done Sign My Name: A Memoir
    Author: Tyson, Timothy B.
    Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 0609610589 Date: 2004
    starKirkusstarPW
    Tyson sheds a new light on the struggle for racial justice as he weaves together childhood memories with the realities of present-day Oxford, NC--his hometown--where a young black man was killed in the town square by a Klansmen in 1970 and acquitted by an all-white jury.
    Updated 4.19.04

 

Contact...

Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)

Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com

Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.


I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.

 

Who...

act 08

Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)

Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com

Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760. Sisy image


I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.

 

Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis:
Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.

Overbooked is not an official Chesterfield County Public Library service. Overbooked does not endorse any commercial providers (or their products and services) linked to from this web site.

Overbooked was the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.

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