Story Sleuth Vol. 01 🕵🏻‍♀️📚

In which your intrepid detective (me) digs through the stacks for obscure, niche, and oddly specific book recommendations.

Last week, I finished a book I really loved (Spellstruck by Martha Waters, coming out this September!). And it made me realize that a specific niche sub-genre I’ve fallen in love with is: witchy, lightly magical rom-coms. I think this is due to the many many formative years I spent as a child and tween reading cozy domestic Harry Potter fanfiction where everyone was happy and there was only slight conflict. This is probably something I should discuss with a therapist, but I digress.

Anyways, this led me on a mad tear through the internet to find another book that fit the bill. And then that led me to thinking—I bet other people have this same issue and maybe I can use my upsettingly vast knowledge of books and where to find them to play detective.

I asked in our group chat if anyone had any specific genres, plots, tropes, or otherwise obscure requests, and sure enough, I got tons of amazing prompts. Without further ado, here are my best suggestions!

Nicole asks: I prefer nonfiction. Which autobiography or memoir is a must-read?

Ooh, I also am a big fan of autobiographies and memoirs, so I’ve got lots of ideas here. Here are some of my favorite memoirs, both celebrity and non.

• Little Weirds by Jenny Slate | Surprisingly tender and unsurprisingly hilarious essays and musings from Jenny Slate, best known (by me, anyways) as the voice of Marcel the Shell and Mona Lisa Saperstein on Parks and Rec.

• Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham | Lena’s first memoir-in-essays about young adulthood, creativity, fame, nostalgia, etc. Somehow both out of touch and completely universal, I adored it when I was a twenty-something.

• Tacky by Rax King | Essays on the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring growing up in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss. All I can say is, her essay on Bath and Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar body spray made me ugly cry. A must-read for any child of the 2000s.

• When the World Didn’t End by Guinevere Turner | An acclaimed screenwriter tells the story of her childhood growing up with the infamous Lyman Family cult—and the complicated and unexpected pain of leaving the only home she’d ever known.

• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy | Former Nickelodeon child star tells the story of her tumultuous childhood with a deeply narcissistic mother as she struggled to support her family and navigate fame, mental health issues, and upsettingly creepy older men in the industry.

• Sociopath by Patric Gagne | A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder.

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion | From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Annie asks: I just finished These Summer Storms and am craving another rich-people-behaving-badly book with a heavy romance plot and family tension!

I too am a big fan of the “rich people behaving badly” subgenre, ever since I read The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada as a pre-teen. Some of these skew a bit more drama/thriller, but I think you’ll still like them.

• Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson | Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.

• Park Avenue by Renée Ahdieh | Jia Song has always been destined for greatness. As the daughter of Korean bodega owners, she promised herself that she would have every Fifth Avenue luxury when she grew up, and it is all finally within reach. She has just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, so when her boss asks her to sit in on the hush-hush family implosion of a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation—only to find out that it is one of the most famous Korean families in the world.

• The Hunting Wives by May Cobb | Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and a stressful, competitive big-city life to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless. Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives.

• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan | An outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.

• The Lake Club by Lina Patton | A sizzling, soapy summer debut, in which two women in a wealthy lakeside suburb clash over a cute male nanny, setting off a chain reaction that pulls the town’s darker secrets to the surface. As the heat rises between the three of them, the truth behind a long-buried scandal comes to light, and everyone at the club must reckon with the consequences.

Leah Keggi asks: Looking for a British cozy mystery vibe but American and maybe off the beaten path a bit (minimal romance). I loved the Castle Knoll series but didn’t love the “everyone on this train is a suspect” narrator/voice.

Oh, you are speaking my language. I have PLENTY of ideas for this one.

• The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant by Liza Tully | A brilliant Boomer detective and her ambitious Gen Z assistant try to get along in this delightful feel-good mystery.

• Welcome to Murder Week by Karen Dukess | In this delightfully funny and heartfelt new novel, an American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town. (This counts, she’s AMERICAN!)

• Death Was Not on the Guest List by Jenni L. Walsh | This one takes place right down the street from where I used to live in Chicago!!!! From bestselling author Jenni L. Walsh comes a witty Jazz Age mystery where rivalry, ambition, and deceit glitter under every chandelier… and no one gets out until the killer is unmasked.

• The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective by Jo Nichols | Mrs. B, the landlady of The Marigold Cottages, is a stubborn idealist who only rents to people she cares about. The tenants live contentedly in their sleepy Santa Barbara neighborhood, until their peace is shattered when Anthony, a quiet, hulking, ex-con moves in. Three weeks later, a dead body is discovered. Anthony is arrested, and the tenants heave sighs of relief. Until Mrs. B, convinced that he’s innocent, confesses to the crime herself.

• A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro | This one is technically a YA series, I believe, but I still absolutely adore it. It follows the descendants of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as they meet at a posh Connecticut boarding school, get entangled in a crime spree meant to frame them for murder, and (duh) fall in love.

• Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet by Emma Mills | Celebrity gossip can cut to the quick, but when it turns deadly it’s up to an aspiring reporter and her quirky neighbors to close the case in the first of a witty and nostalgic new mystery series set in 2008 California.

Olivia 📚 asks: Nonfiction books about niche subjects to listen on audio—I listened to a book about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it was so interesting. I’m craving more audiobooks about subjects I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards, but have an interest in learning more about.

So, I’m not a big audiobook person, so I can’t promise that all of these are great on audio, but I know they’re all fascinating and, at least for me, often about things that I normally wouldn’t gravitate towards but am interested in learning more about.

• The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green | The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this collection of essays adapted from his critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.

• Cultish by Amanda Montell | I won’t stop until everyone has read this book. This book dives deep into the language that cults use to recruit and retain people to their ranks—and how things like MLMs, gym memberships, parenting groups, and other seemingly-innocuous organizations have seamlessly co-opted this language.

• Selling the Dream by Jane Marie | Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class.

• Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert | A blazing critique of how early-aughts pop culture turned women and girls against each other—and themselves—with disastrous consequences.

• The Science of Last Things by Ellen Wayland-Smith | A collection of essays that probe the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve—losing a parent, giving birth, experiencing a nervous breakdown, coping with breast cancer, etc.

• Filterworld by Kyle Chayka | With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise. What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

• Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke | Part deep dive reportage, part personal journey, part cabinet of curiosities, Butts is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.

Hannah asks: Fiction with deep lore and a story that spans a long time at least decades.

Ooh, this is a juicy one. I had one idea right out of the gate, but had to really put on my detective hat (ahem, deerstalker) to find some more.

• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab | Gosh, have I recommended this book enough? It really ticks all the boxes—lots of deep lore about vampires (not just what you’d expect), plus it spans literal centuries and is beautifully written.

• Outlander by Dianna Gabaldon | I haven’t read this series yet, but they’re kind of the quintessential “generation-spanning deep lore” books. The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles… and into Scotland circa 1743.

• A Time of Witches by Madeline Martin | Across centuries, Lilith and Sybil are bound by blood and by danger. To save themselves, and each other, they must confront the silence that has stolen women’s power for generations—and dare to claim their voices before it’s too late.

• Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm | In this lyrical debut, three generations of Palestinian women must put the haunting of their ancestral home to rest, before the secrets of the past drown them all. Our Cut of Salt is a powerful and intimate look at what it means to make a home, to lose it, and to return, only to find it irrevocably changed.

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Got any recs to add? Have a request for the next installment? Let me know in the comments!

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