Season 3 Episode 6!

In June, the Morbidly Curious Book Club read "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" by Alexa Hagerty!

About the book: Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights. In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones, forensics not only offers proof of mass atrocity but also tells the story of each life lost. Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence. Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, histories of violence and resistance, and her own forensic coming-of-age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.

About the author: Alexa Hagerty is an anthropologist researching science, technology, and human rights. She holds a PhD from Stanford University and is an associate fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her research has received honors and funding from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Ethnological Society, among other institutions. She has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wired, Social Anthropology, and Palais de Tokyo.

TW for the book can be found here: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/758b940a-b9ca-4320-9395-ad45adf7c921

Alexa's website: https://www.alexahagerty.com/

Subscribe to her Substack here: https://alexahagerty.substack.com/

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Patricia's website here: https://www.patriciacornwell.com/

Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere, and Scarpetta’s began when Patricia Cornwell embedded herself in a morgue. In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalized twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham’s wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalization and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner’s office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon. Cornwell leaves no stone unturned in this deeply candid account of her life, offering inspiring insight into what made her into the international sensation she is today.

Patricia Cornwell is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and widely considered one of the world's top crime writers. In 1990, Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. An auspicious debut, it went on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventures—the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. Growing into an international phenomenon, the Scarpetta series won Cornwell the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development. Today, Cornwell’s novels and iconic characters are known around the world. Beyond the Scarpetta series, Cornwell has written the definitive nonfiction account of Jack the Ripper’s identity, cookbooks, a children’s book, a biography of Ruth Graham, and three other fictional series based on the characters Win Garano, Andy Brazil, and Captain Calli Chase. Cornwell continues exploring the latest space-age technologies and threats relevant to contemporary life. Her interests range from the morgue to artificial intelligence and include visits to Interpol, the Pentagon, the U.S. Secret Service, and NASA. Cornwell was born in Miami. She grew up in Montreat, North Carolina, and now lives and works in Boston.

Check out Patricia's website here!

Check The Storygraph for the TW here!

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Murderland is out TODAY in paperback! Go grab a copy!

https://www.carolinefraser.net/

About Murderland: Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing? As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem—the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson—Fraser’s Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy’s Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers. A propulsive nonfiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.

Caroline Fraser is the author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heartland Prize, and the Plutarch Award for Best Biography of the Year. She is also the author of God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, and her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in New Mexico.

Welcome to an archive episode!

Check out our new website: morbidlycuriousbookclub.com

Early and ad-free for Patreon members: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheMorbidlyCuriousBookClub

In 2024, I launched this podcast to delve deeper into our book club's nonfiction selections by engaging directly with the authors, the experts behind these compelling works. However, the book club has been around since 2021...so there are some 'archive' picks that we need to discuss!

In August of 2023, we read what would become a staple for the book club: "We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys" by Erin Kimmerle!

Forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle investigates of the notorious Dozier Boys School—the true story behind the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Nickel Boys—and the contentious process to exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families. The Arthur G. Dozier Boys School was a well-guarded secret in Florida for over a century, until reports of cruelty, abuse, and “mysterious” deaths shut the institution down in 2011. Established in 1900, the juvenile reform school accepted children as young as six years of age for crimes as harmless as truancy or trespassing. The boys sent there, many of whom were Black, were subject to brutal abuse, routinely hired out to local farmers by the school’s management as indentured labor, and died either at the school or attempting to escape its brutal conditions. In the wake of the school’s shutdown, Erin Kimmerle, a leading forensic anthropologist, stepped in to locate the school’s graveyard to determine the number of graves and who was buried there, thus beginning the process of reuniting the boys with their families through forensic and DNA testing. The school’s poorly kept accounting suggested some thirty-one boys were buried in unmarked graves in a remote field on the school’s property. The real number was at least twice that. Kimmerle’s work did not go unnoticed; residents and local law enforcement threatened and harassed her team in their eagerness to control the truth she was uncovering—one she continues to investigate to this day. We Carry Their Bones is a detailed account of Jim Crow America and an indictment of the reform school system as we know it. It’s also a fascinating dive into the science of forensic anthropology and an important retelling of the extraordinary efforts taken to bring these lost children home to their families—an endeavor that created a political firestorm and a dramatic reckoning with racism and shame in the legacy of America.

Erin H. Kimmerle is an American forensic anthropologist, artist, and executive director of the Institute of Forensic Anthropology & Applied Science at the University of South Florida. She was awarded the 2020 AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.

Find the book's TW here: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/e2f00bfb-6469-4451-87af-6afa94959806

Welcome to Season 3 Episode 5!

Join the Book Club, Subscribe to our book box, support our small business here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

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In May, the Morbidly Curious Book Club read "Expert Witness: The Weight of Our Testimony When Justice Hangs in the Balance" by Ann Wolbert Burgess & Steven Matthew Constantine!

From the author of the critically-acclaimed true crime account, A Killer By Design (the inspiration behind Hulu's original docuseries, Mastermind), a groundbreaking look into the crucial role played by expert witnesses in the most high-profile criminal cases, based on Dr. Ann Burgess' personal experiences within the criminal justice system. Written through Burgess' singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cases in the last thirty years--from Bill Cosby to the Menendez brothers to Larry Nassar--to reveal the deeply human stories behind the trials that have captivated a nation. The book explores the role of expert witnesses in high-stakes court cases, offering first-hand accounts and never-before-seen interviews with attorneys, victims, and offenders. Expert Witness places readers inside the mind of the nation's most prominent courtroom expert, following Burgess as she takes on one seismic case after the next. Throughout the narrative, each case deepens the reader's understanding of the art and science of expert testimony, taking readers from the women's movement of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement of today--one of the largest social reckonings in recent history. At its core, Expert Witness is a story of empowerment. It's a story of compassion and the ever-increasing need for individuals to stand up and speak truth to power or to popular opinion. And it's ultimately a story of how revolutionary one voice can be.

Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, DNSc., APRN, is a leading forensic and psychiatric nurse who worked with the FBI for over two decades. She is currently a professor at the Boston College Connell School of Nursing, and she lives in Boston, MA.

Steven Matthew Constantine (cowriter) is the assistant director of marketing and communications at the Boston College Connell School of Nursing. He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Boston, MA.

TW can be found here: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/d414428c-a932-438a-8960-ae081f5d3cff

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Hallie's website here: https://hallierubenhold.com/

About Story of a Murder: On February 1, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer Belle Elmore suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, medical fraudster Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen. Ethel Le Neve, Crippen’s typist and lover, who fled with Crippen in disguise, has always hidden in the shadows of this tale–was she really just “an innocent young girl” in thrall to a powerful older man? And was there an equally sinister story behind the death of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte? Brimming with twists and featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, star lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, STORY OF A MURDER offers an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era.

About The Five: Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink dust from printing presses and escaped human traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time--but their greatest misfortune was to be born women.

TW for The Five: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/1b3f4bef-f77c-4820-894a-599e55e7c885

TW for Story of a Murder: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/91d3c9ea-0249-4d02-b746-64da658f2e09

Welcome to an archive episode!

Check out our new website: morbidlycuriousbookclub.com

Early and ad-free for Patreon members: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheMorbidlyCuriousBookClub

In 2024, I launched this podcast to delve deeper into our book club's nonfiction selections by engaging directly with the authors, the experts behind these compelling works. However, the book club has been around since 2021...so there are some 'archive' picks that we need to discuss!

In September of 2023, we read what would become a staple for the book club: "WHAT THE DEAD KNOW, Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator" by Barbara Butcher!

When Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism, she found an unexpected lifeline in a job at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in NYC. As only the second woman ever hired for the role—and the first to last more than three months—she became a vital force in the world of forensic science and criminal investigations. Over the next two decades, Butcher worked thousands of cases: gruesome homicides, suspicious suicides, heartbreaking scenes involving underage victims, and complex mass casualty investigations. In her unforgettable account, she invites readers into the gritty, high-stakes world of crime-scene investigation, from the autopsy room and morgue to tense moments at active crime scenes. Along the way, she uncovered how confronting death every day gave her a new perspective on life—and ultimately saved her from becoming a statistic herself. In vivid, darkly humorous prose, Butcher recounts how she narrowly avoided a booby-trapped suicide scene, and how, during 9/11, she and her colleagues worked tirelessly to identify victims using scraps of clothing, DNA, and the memories of grieving loved ones. Her honesty, resilience, and sharp wit make this a standout in the genre of first responder memoirs and women in law enforcement.

Learn more about Barbara here: https://www.barbarabutcherofficial.com/

The Death Investigator trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilLAP28qN0&time_continue=1&source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.barbarabutcherofficial.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.barbarabutcherofficial.com

Find the book here with TW: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/369dae9c-ddfd-4d4c-872a-9f83acf2aefd

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

*Please note! I truly had to Frankenstein this episode... we had so many technical difficulties, unfortunately, it's a shorter episode with some questions missed, but I did the best I could to get you guys a cohesive piece!

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Giveaway info here! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19Zqa7zjeNQOYTtnJhrXow0oB95xFSPnKaF85O8BRQ0M/edit

About the book:

Serial killers. Homicidal spouses. Sociopathic criminals. Claire St. Amant has met them all.

She spent nearly a decade in network television chasing the biggest true crime stories in the country, including the murder of Chris Kyle, plastic-surgeon-turned-murder-for-hire suspect Thomas Michael Dixon, the Parkland high school mass shooting, the disappearance of Christina Morris, and serial killer Samuel Little. Bringing a true crime story to network television requires quick thinking and tenacious stamina, and in her debut memoir, Claire offers true crime fans a rare in-depth look from the other side of the yellow tape. In Killer Story, readers will learn what it really takes to get these gripping cases on the air with insights such as:

• How it feels to share space with a dead-eyed murderer
• Which TV show has a reputation for “eating their young”
• How reporters win over skeptical cops and reluctant lawyers
• Why TV journalists are always racing against the clock—and competitor sabotage
• What happens when a district attorney decides journalists have committed a felony
• The unresolved crimes that still haunt Claire to this day

This eye-opening look behind the scenes of true crime television offers an unforgettable read—and a window into the daily reality of investigative journalism.

About Claire: Investigative journalist Claire St. Amant is the host of the true crime podcast, Final Days on Earth, and the author of the memoir, Killer Story. St. Amant developed and produced stories for CBS News and is credited on over 20 episodes of 48 Hours, including an assassination attempt on a judge in Austin, a serial killer in South Carolina, and a murder-for-hire sting on two doctors in Houston. She won a New York Press Club award for her work on “Bringing a Nation Together,” a special report on the 2016 Dallas Police shooting, which was also nominated for an Emmy in breaking news. In 2019, St. Amant began contributing to 60 Minutes, with “The Ranger and The Serial Killer.” She built her career one story at a time, rising up through local media to national television, a network podcast, and her latest project, a tell-all memoir about true crime TV. St. Amant got her start at People Newspapers in Dallas, where she earned her first of two Philbin Awards for excellence in legal reporting. She was a founding editor of the popular daily news site CultureMap Dallas, and her investigative series on a faked home invasion led to a new career at CBS News. A graduate of Baylor University and a returned Peace Corps volunteer, St. Amant is a native Texan who is always on the hunt for her next adventure. She loves few things more than a good story and a long run, though her husband and son are notable exceptions.

Find user submitted TW here: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6fef5a61-88c2-4eb9-a8f5-7133e0885249