Dark nonfiction book club is a book discussion group for the morbidly curious. We will explore dark topics such as true crime, natural disasters, war stories, death and dying, man-made disasters, forensic science, burial and funerary practices, and cults. 

Register for Dark Nonfiction Book Club, December 17 discussion.

December’s selection is: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek MD and T. J. Mitchell. 

“The fearless memoir of a young forensic pathologist’s “rookie season” as a NYC medical examiner, and the cases–hair-raising and heartbreaking and impossibly complex–that shaped her as both a physician and a mother. Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Judy Melinek began her training as a New York City forensic pathologist. With her husband T.J. and their toddler Daniel holding down the home front, Judy threw herself into the fascinating world of death investigation–performing autopsies, investigating death scenes, counseling grieving relatives. Working Stiff chronicles Judy’s two years of training, taking readers behind the police tape of some of the most harrowing deaths in the Big Apple, including a firsthand account of the events of September 11, the subsequent anthrax bio-terrorism attack, and the disastrous crash of American Airlines flight 587.”–Syndetics.

Multiple copies are available at the service desk.