Nonfiction about macabre and taboo subjects
created by prettyinpapercuts
last updated August, 2026
Dying to be Ill
Marc D. Feldman
Apocalypse Culture
Adam Parfrey
Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries
Greg Melville
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies
Caitlin Doughty
Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie
Clark Collis
The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing
Daniel Bergner
Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
Rick Emerson
No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators
Steve Jackson
Lay Them to Rest: On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless
Laurah Norton
All the Living and the Dead
Hayley Campbell
Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science
Erika Engelhaupt
The Voyeur's Motel
Gay Talese
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest
Gregg Olsen
Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen
Dexter Palmer
Nicole Angemi's Anatomy Book: A Catalog of Familiar, Rare, and Unusual Pathologies
Nicole Angemi
The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration
Richard Barnett
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Kate Moore
Lords of Chaos
Michael Moynihan
Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us
Jesse Bering
The Day After Roswell
Philip J. Corso
18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
Bruce Goldfarb
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Randy Shilts
Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Andy Mulvihill
Cursed Objects: Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items
J.W. Ocker
The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief
Joseph P. Laycock
Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game
Stoker Hunt
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
John Green
A Thousand Naked Strangers: a Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back
Kevin Hazzard
The Family that Couldn't Sleep
D.T. Max
You All Grow Up and Leave Me: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession
Piper Weiss
Yoooo. Excellent list. I stole several. You sharing my nonfiction brain.
SAME
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