85 Books Like Death Takes a Bath

Gethsemane Brown is a vibrant, ambitious, and brave. She’ll strike out anywhere in the world to be a Maestra as long as her life is filled with music.

The offers aren’t what she would like and takes a job in an Irish boys’ academy. The boys were rebellious (of course they are). The school won’t support her recommendations. As the only black woman in the village (and an American), the entire town knew her business before she could even unpack her boxes.

Readers should be prepared for a touch of the paranormal here. Gethsemane lives in a haunted house. Despite this quirk, the mystery is completely grounded in the realism of the town, its people, the church, etc. 

This one takes place in London, a city I love and have visited many times, but there’s a bigger reason I enjoy this mystery so much.

Horowitz tackles the writing world as only he can do, with himself as the protagonist, addressing aspects big and small that every writer today will find familiar. And when the murder occurs—well, all I can say is you’ll have to read it.

He calls in his own character Daniel Hawthorne to help. As a mystery writer, I find that so appealing!

Why stick to the present if you’re going to armchair travel in search of the perfect vacation spot to hide a dead body?

Nothing says intrigue like Renaissance Venice! It was far easier to hide a dead body back in 1610, which is when this delightful mystery takes place. Full of powerful men, intelligent women, and secrets, Nina Wachsman leads us through the gated Jewish ghetto to the salons of the rich and famous with style and subterfuge in The Gallery of Beauties.

Makes me think of a 17th-century Miss Congeniality.

I’ve never been to New Zealand, and this book makes me feel like I’m there with forensic odontologist Alexa Glock, who identifies bodies via dental records.

She navigates men, murder, and the ocean in this tightly woven murder mystery that’s as much about her personal life as her professional one. I learned quite a bit about sharks and whales, and bonus, this mystery includes quicksand!

Although the U.S. has wonderful libraries, England seems to top them, and I’ve always found English mysteries to have a special draw to them. The Bodies in the Library, the first First Edition Library Mystery, is no exception, combining both an English library and a clever mystery. Set in the English town of Bath, the book features Hayley Burke, who has taken the position of curator of a collection of Golden Age mystery books despite the fact that she has no knowledge of mysteries and is faking her experience. So when an Agatha Christie group meets at the library and one of the members is murdered, Hayley must do her best to solve it, so she can keep her job. Following in the footsteps of Miss Marple and Agatha Raisin, I found Hayley to be a memorable character with nerve and verve who I enjoyed meeting in this first… show more.

A coffee table book, but a sublime one. If you want to read one book on this subject (after The Dirt on Clean, of course), The Book of the Bath is it. Not only is the text intelligent, comprehensive, and readable, it is sumptuously illustrated with paintings, photographs, and ads. Covering "The Story of Water", "Private Baths", "Public Bath"s, and "The Modern Bathroom", it concludes (perhaps because the author is French) with "The Sensual Delights of the Bath". Highly recommended.

In the summer of 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, their close friend Lord Byron, Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s physician John William Polidori gathered at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where they challenged each other to craft ghost stories.

Mary’s contribution—a tale exploring the possibility of reanimating a corpse—became the seed of Frankenstein. This summer and the creation of Frankenstein have been vividly portrayed in bio-pics such as Gothic (1984, Ken Russell), Haunted Summer (1988, Ivan Passer), and Rowing with the Wind (1988, Gonzalo Suárez).

Less explored is her time in Bath (Sept 1816 - May 1817), where she worked on the novel. This book (2024) delves into these months, showing how Mary navigated grief, personal loss, and her writing routine. For those who love books, it also highlights the texts she and Percy read during this period, which influenced her work.… show more.

This is quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. I recommend it for that reason. It will have you laughing out loud. Brooks gives Chaucer’s larger-than-life, serial monogamist an opportunity to tell her side of the story. And fair enough! Created by Geoffrey Chaucer for The Canterbury Tales in 1392, the Wife of Bath is literature’s first feminist hero. The outspoken and exuberant Alyson (the wife’s real name) suffers immeasurably—physically, emotionally, and financially—at the hands of the men she chooses to marry, yet she never loses her self-respect and humour. Likewise, she is never broken, despite her husbands' best efforts to tame her.

This thriller is a compulsively readable novel.

In dueling POVs of a gay couple, Vernon explores their relationship, with its power imbalances and manipulations, in all its messiness. Neither narrator is being honest with the other, and the novel is set in motion when Oliver decides to visit a bathhouse where a would-be trick attacks him, making him fear for his life.

The rest of the novel ping-pongs between the narrators, both of whom are concealing so much from each other for very different reasons. 

After 40 years of bathing in onsen (hot springs), our local sento (public bathhouse), and all sorts of equivalents, I’ve come to understand that bathing in Japan is a lot more than a way of keeping clean – it’s an immersion in culture as well as hot water. I found Clark’s book fascinating and often found myself muttering “ah, yes, he’s right” to myself, as I looked back on my bathing experiences in Japan. Historically, bathing is not something to be undertaken alone, but in groups, be they family, friends, or workmates. Some of my best experiences in Japan have been the daily ritual of taking my children to our local sento and becoming friends with locals in our neighborhood. “Hadaka no tsukiai” – friends in nakedness – nothing is hidden!