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/

I sat down with Rachel Hartigan to discuss her book Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life on the anniversary of her disappearance.

When Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared in 1937, the clues poured in, attracting wild conspiracies about her tragic fate. In Lost, former National Geographic reporter Rachel Hartigan delves into Earhart’s disappearance, introducing a host of eccentric characters who have become obsessed with finding the truth. Did the great aviator crash land near the Marshall Islands, only to be captured by Japanese soldiers? Did she manage to land on Nikumaroro Island but die of injury or starvation? Or did she run out of fuel and crash into the ocean? Interspersed with the search for Earhart is the story of her extraordinary life: her unstable childhood, her itinerant early career, and how a PR-savvy publisher transformed her into an aviation icon and became her husband in an unconventional marriage. In the spirit of nonfiction blockbusters like The Lost City of Z, Hartigan draws us into the world of Earhart’s devotees and unspools a beguiling tale. The theories lead Hartigan from the pilot’s birthplace of Atchison, Kansas to an expedition on a remote Pacific Island, where forensic dogs attempt to recover a potential sample of Earhart’s DNA. As tantilizing new evidence mounts, Hartigan and her fellow investigators descend deeper into a world of conspiracy and obsession. Through its irresistible characters, prodigious research, and haunting images, Lost reveals not just why we remember Amelia Earhart as a trailblazer and adventurer, but why unsolved mysteries keep us forever searching for answers.

Rachel Hartigan reported on science and history at National Geographic for more than a decade, twice voyaging to the uninhabited Pacific atoll where some people think Amelia Earhart died. A former editor of the Washington Post's Book World, she also covered education and culture for U.S. News & World Report. She lives near Washington, D.C.

TW can be found here: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/5893c9cd-a8c5-48dc-9cb0-7b134ee6d0a4

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!