Nonfiction November Week 4

Hello Friends! It’s time for the next blog prompt hosted by Plucked From The Stacks.  Make sure to visit their page and link up your post too!  Let’s get into it!

WEEK 4

This week we’re focusing on all the great nonfiction books that *almost* don’t seem real. A sports biography involving overcoming massive obstacles, a profile on a bizarre scam, a look into the natural wonders in our world—basically, if it makes your jaw drop, you can highlight it for this week’s topic.

I have two books to share on this topic.  The first book is a truly horrible “true-crime” story and the second one will help restore your faith in humanity. If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen – I was absolutely sickened reading about this woman and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.  Page after page of horrible details I’d rather were not taking up space in my brain.

Book Details: A shocking and empowering true-crime story of three sisters determined to survive their mother’s house of horrors.

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

Harrowing and heartrending, If You Tell is a survivor’s story of absolute evil–and the freedom and justice that Nikki, Sami, and Tori risked their lives to fight for. Sisters forever, victims no more, they found a light in the darkness that made them the resilient women they are today–loving, loved and moving on.

Goodreads | Bookshop

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You will definitely need a palate cleanser after that one…. and I’ve got the perfect book, recommended by my friend and author Kimberly Davis Basso. We recently had a fun IG Live on all things nonfiction (click here to watch) and this is the book she reads “when the world falls apart.”

When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out in California by Beth Pratt-Bergstrom

Book Details: Wildness beats in the heart of California’s urban areas. In Los Angeles, residents are rallying to build one of the largest wildlife crossings in the world because of the plight of one lonely mountain lion named P-22. Porpoises cavort in San Francisco Bay again because of a grassroots effort to clean up a waterway that was once a toxic mess. And on the Facebook campus in Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg and his staff have provided a home for an endearing family of wild gray foxes. Through actions as sweeping as citizen science initiatives and as instantaneous as social media posts, a movement of diverse individuals and communities is taking action to recast nature as an integral part of our everyday lives. When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors explores this evolving dynamic between humans and animals, including remarkable stories like the journey of the wolf OR-7 and how Californians are welcoming wolves back to the state after a ninety-year absence, how park staff and millions of visitors rallied to keep Yosemite’s famed bears wild, and many more tales from across the state. Written by Beth Pratt-Bergstrom of the National Wildlife Federation, these inspiring stories celebrate a new paradigm for wildlife conservation: coexistence.

Goodreads | Bookshop

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Don’t forget to check out the latest #nonfictionbookparty post over on Instagram.  I’m hosting a daily photo challenge, tons of giveaways, author guest posts, and much more!

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