Books like Rosemary — picked by fans

After his presidential victory in 1860, Lincoln still had to get to Washington to take office. I loved this book because of its cliff-hanging, blow-by-blow description of how close pro-slavers came to assassinating Lincoln even before he took office; if they had succeeded, slavery would have been preserved for years to come.

In a fascinating and original story, Widmer notes the parallels between Lincoln’s courageous Odyssey—a 1900-mile, thirteen-day train trip to Washington DC, with dangers lurking all along the route—and Odysseus’s perilous journey home in Homer’s Odyssey.

Jay Bonansinga is best known as a horror writer – he took over the Walking Dead novels when Robert Kirkman “handed him the keys to the Jaguar”, as Jay charmingly puts it. He brings that visceral immediacy and intensity to his nonfiction as well. This is his book on the sinking of the Eastland as it was being loaded with passengers for a picnic excursion. On July 24, 1915, this tragedy claimed more lives than the Chicago Fire. Nearly 10,000 people could only stand by and watch helplessly as the overloaded Eastland rolled, righted itself, then counterbalanced and rolled to the other side, sinking in the Chicago River. Jay tells the story of the people (many of them immigrants) who lived this history, and brings their stories to life once more.

The Lore series, based on the World of Lore podcast, is a wonderful collection of the strange, bizarre, and creepy. This particular book focuses on people who gained fame through their disturbing hobbies and unpleasant predilections: serial killers, criminals, psychopaths, and other associated weirdos. I've always been drawn to collections like these, and this is one of the best. Check out the others in the series too.

I will read absolutely anything that Richard Estep writes. He has written books about the Villisca Ax Murders, Malvern Manor, and other crazy-haunted places. This one, about a site in his native England, is utterly terrifying. Estep writes with a very straightforward, matter-of-fact style (his writing reminds me much of my own style), and the evidence he presents for this haunted site is deeply chilling -- especially since his team is one of the groups that has investigated the Cage. 

This whole book is a powerful exploration of alcoholism, homelessness, and the father-son relationship, but it was a single chapter that made me write “WOW” in the margins.

“Same Again” is a four-page chapter composed of nothing but short sentences that contain only euphemisms for alcohol, from “the usual” to “same again.” That sounds like it wouldn’t work, but it does. It’s poetic, gripping, and follows a narrative arc through a single evening at the bar.

Read the whole book, but don’t skip this mesmerizing chapter.  

Full disclosure: I was an early reader of this book and have offered it a blurb. But I wouldn’t have done so had it not significantly impacted me.

Aiello’s memoir, though not strictly horror, uses aspects of genre and pop culture—including aspects of horror—to detail their own history with mental illness and the surrounding difficulties and stigmas attached to it. They go to great and much-needed lengths to dissect how mental illness has been made out to be one of the great boogeymen of our lives via its myriad portrayals in culture (as a villain, a threat, a diabolical force, etc.) and detail the damage that’s been done as a result.

This is a powerful book in which I saw myself reflected all too often.

A man called “Pepper,” who may or may not suffer from mental illness, ends up in a locked mental ward in Queens, New York, where the entire novel takes place.

A beast, who the patients believe is the devil, comes out at night, assaulting and sometimes killing patients. Patient deaths are chalked up to suicide. The engaging, quirky characters—drugged to the gills while warehoused and essentially untreated in a public hospital—share the defining feature of being low-income and unprotected from both the supernatural and human forces that would destroy them. They must take matters into their own hands to protect themselves.

I appreciated the theme of how marginalization and isolation presented as much terror here as the supernatural. Yet, the hope and humor of the characters also kept me engaged and frequently smiling.

Hatch did stellar research to expose how coercive psychiatric treatment—especially tranquilization with heavy antipsychotics—is spreading into nursing homes, child foster care and juvenile facilities, immigration centers, and prisons.

Antipsychotics are becoming a ‘go-to’ approach for institutional management of large populations, especially targeting people of color.

Hatch’s work also draws attention to a vital, related issue: Abundant research shows that involuntary treatment is driven by our culture’s dominant prejudices: classism, racism, sexism, sanism, etc. Predictably then, public discussions of involuntary treatment routinely lack, and desperately need, a greater diversity of voices.

So, while highlighting the work of the Black scholar Hatch, I want to also mention several recent anthologies that bring forth a fantastic diversity of voices and perspectives on contempory psychiatric care, forced treatment, and alternatives: Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies; Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, and We've… show more.

Terese Marie Mailhot’s raw account of her traumatic childhood and its enduring consequences took my breath away. A nearly lifelong Alaskan, I am acutely aware of the social problems afflicting Indigenous communities; in fact, I’ve done research on the topic.

Yet, I have never read a more honest, painful, and beautifully written testimonial by an Indigenous person about her experience with childhood poverty and neglect, substance abuse in the home, sexual abuse, and resulting poor self-esteem and self-doubt. Mailhot, who was raised on Seabird Island in British Columbia, began writing her memoir as mental health therapy and it became a process of self-discovery.

Her experience highlights the effects of historical trauma on Indigenous individuals and communities, as well as the prevalence of maltreatment of Indigenous women. 

This next book is gritty in its authenticity. It isn’t for the faint of heart to read about the heartbreaking struggles of thirteen-year-old Anna Collette whose mother tries to take her life and is hospitalized. Anna has to live with her distant father, his new wife, and their baby where she doesn’t feel like part of the family. But the author gives us a warm and loving character in her stepmother who shows Della what family can be. I’m enthralled by true and complex characters in this book who represent the highs and lows of real life.