Nonfiction that reads like your favorite novel

The best nonfiction doesn't feel like homework. These five read with the momentum and warmth of the novels on your nightstand.

Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile turns Churchill's first year and the Blitz into a scene-by-scene thriller, drawn from real diaries. Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads pulls off the opposite trick with scale, retelling all of world history with its center moved east, and somehow keeps it gripping.

For something more intimate, Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone braids her own therapy with her patients' stories into a page-turner about being human. Matthew McConaughey's Greenlights is a memoir with a philosophy, told in his unmistakable voice. And Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick is the rare business book you'll actually finish, because it models its own advice about making ideas impossible to forget.

Proof that true stories, told well, can beat any novel for a hook.