58 Books Like We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down

Père-Lachaise was the second international cemetery I ever visited. It made me fall in love with the cemetery's history, celebrities, and amazing sculptures.

Those things are all touched on in this charming little book, written and photographed by the cemetery's curator. I'm fascinated by the author's complicated and varied job: from showing foreign dignitaries around to comforting families and arranging burials to dealing with international tourists who want to treat the cemetery like Disneyland.

Of course, he's compensated by living with his family inside the cemetery itself. It's difficult not to be jealous of such a sweet gig.

I am so envious of Tui Snider!

She has been traveling around and around the globe. At every port of call, she skips the souvenir stands and heads for the cemeteries. Because she's a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, she can often link up with local taphophiles for personalized burial ground tours. Reading her adventures is so much fun!

There aren't exactly 80 graves in this book, but Tui does explore from Texas to Egypt, from Singapore to Portugal, and from Petra to Transylvania. She even leads tours of cemeteries in Italy each summer. She's inspired me to make plans to hit the road. There are so many cemeteries yet for me to see.

Mariana Enriquez is wild.

I learned a lot reading her memoir, from the word for a sexual attraction to statues (agalmatophilia) to the fact that it was Diego Rivera who named Catrina, the elegant female skeleton in the tight dress.

Enriquez visited a lot of cemeteries that I've only read about and others that I've never heard of, all the while writing passionately about indigenous erasure in colonial cemeteries, the recovery of the bodies of Argentina’s Disappeared, and the history and traditions of all the countries she visits. I was fascinated to explore the perspective of a cemetery tourist who isn't American or European.

When one unaffordable hospital stay could unhouse any of us, this cemetery memoir raises issues I’d never considered.

By volunteering with homeless organizations and visiting street hospices, Amy Shea delves into the myriad ways cities dispose of their poor. She struggles with her curiosity about her subjects and her right (and privilege) to tell their stories. That aspect of the book intrigued me.

Originally, I felt as if she was centering herself in the narrative, but at some point, I found it liberating, giving her readers (and myself) permission to ask questions and search for ways to help, even if the subjects were unfamiliar or distant to ourselves.

Her memoir was the reverse of othering: inviting us to participate in solutions still being discovered.

In college I majored in American Indian Studies and became very familiar with the term “survivance”. First used by Anishinaabeg writer Gerald Vizenor, survivance, defined is survival that transcends victimhood, that resists generations of oppression, and carves meaning out of great pain.

Peter Razor embodies survivance in his autobiography, which recounts his childhood as a ward of the State of Minnesota in the 1930s. His story is one of many that shines a light on a dark period when many Native American children were taken from their homes and families, forced to uproot their identity and existence to the unforgiving world of white America.

This book tells the story of the ground-breaking Minnesota Longitudinal Study, the first to document developmental effects of infant-mother attachment security/insecurity and so much more, a contribution to understanding that greatly shaped my own career.

The book shares discoveries which emerged in following more than 200 children growing up under high-risk conditions from birth to adulthood. In so doing it illuminates whether, how, and why early-life experiences foster problematic development or resilience in the face of adversity.

With biting satire and elegiac prose, Main Street is the paragon of stories set in small towns.

Author Sinclair Lewis was obviously not enamored of small towns, and like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, is perhaps exorcising some demons from his own upbringing. Nevertheless, perhaps unable to help himself, he instills his protagonist, Carol Milford (Kennicott) with a “Never give up” small town value. At the end she is undaunted. Even though she’s been stifled at nearly every turn, in her own words she has “kept the faith.”

I love the work of Sinclair Lewis. I based the character of July Huffaker in Delphic Oracle, U.S.A. on Elmer Gantry, and when I taught in medical schools, kept copies of Arrowsmith in my office that I gave to students and residents interested in a career in academic medicine. “Read this,” I told them. “If you still want in, come talk to… show more.

I admit it. I read the Hannah Swensen books by Joanna Fluke all out of order.

Key Lime Pie Murder is the ninth book in the series, but the first one I read. I picked it up because I love Key Lime Pie! Joanna Fluke delivers in this murder mystery full of laughs, twisty turns, and delicious desserts. If you’re looking for a good place to start reading this series and you’re not committed to starting at the beginning, try a little Key Lime Pie.

In the Summer of 1932, the orphan Odie O’Banion commits a terrible crime and is forced to flee the terrible institution where he is, in a very real sense, a prisoner. He and three of his young companions steel away in the night and begin to search for a new, better way of life.

This book has everything: an epic tale well told, a heroic journey, a paddle down a wild river, poignant adventure, and the growth of the soul. Think The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Odyssey.

I loved it from the very first page and could not put this book down.

Unspeakable Things is based on a true crime from Jess Lourey’s own small, Minnesota hometown.

Set in the 1980s, Cassie McDowell’s life on a farm with her sister and parents looks like a perfect childhood. She loves school, has a crush on the nicest boy… But when local boys start to go missing and the haunting crimes become a pall over this idyllic childhood and the more Cassie learns about what is happening, the more she realizes that the monster she feared under the bed may be real.

The point of view of 13-year-old Cassie draws you back to the age when we make that subtle but permanent shift from childhood into the brutal reality of the adult world. Fraught and tense, this is the kind of story that stayed with me long after I read the final page.