True stories that read like thrillers
The Bookyol Editors · 5 min read
The best narrative nonfiction has a dirty secret: it's structured like a thriller, but every word is true. These five will keep you up past your bedtime and leave you unsettled that it all really happened.
David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon reconstructs the systematic murder of the oil-rich Osage in 1920s Oklahoma and the birth of the FBI. Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing uses a single 1972 abduction to unravel the entire secret war of the Troubles. Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is a survivor's account of the deadliest day on Everest, told with unsparing honesty about his own role.
Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City braids the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with a serial killer operating in its shadow. And John Carreyrou's Bad Blood exposes the Theranos fraud from the inside, one intimidated whistleblower at a time.
Rigorously reported, impossible to put down. Journalism at the exact pitch of a novel.
