Six medical nonfiction books that read like thrillers

Audrey Blake has a split personality-- because she is the creative alter ego of Regina Sirois and Jaima Fixsen, two authors who met online in a survivor style writing contest. They live 1500 miles apart, but both are prairie girls: Fixsen hails from Alberta, Canada, and Sirois from the wheatfields of Kansas. Both are addicted to history, words, and stories of redoubtable women, and agree that their friendship, better and longer lasting than any other prize, is proof that good things happen in this random, crazy universe.

Blake's new novel is The Girl in His Shadow.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged six "current non-fiction titles...every bit as gripping as the latest forensic thriller," including:

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

If epidemiology has ever been sexy it certainly is in this book. Barry’s exceptional gift for personifying the tiniest elements of a virus will leave you wondering if you are reading about germs or intense relationships. He doesn’t tell history; He builds it around you until you are completely immersed.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Lydia Kang's eight titles that will immerse you in medicine's long, messy past.

--Marshal Zeringue