This is a terrible guide to narrative non-fiction and a just-about-ok guide to what I like and the kind of stuff I’d love to (be able to) write.

I’d love to read something new — share what you like!

• The Hotel Metropol – Ryszard Kapuściński
  I am living on a raft in a side-street in the merchant district of Accra.
  
  
• Boomtown girl – Peter Hessler (2001)
  Finding a new life in the golden city.
  
  
• After the sky fell – Brady Dennis (2005)
  The few drivers on this dark, lonely stretch of the Suncoast Parkway in Pasco County pull up to the toll booth, hand their dollars to Lloyd Blair and then speed away. None of them knows why the old man sits here, night after night, working the graveyard shift.
  
  
• The big short – Michael Lewis (2010)
  Inside the doomsday machine.
  
  
• Dr Don – Peter Hessler (2011)
  The life of a small-town druggist.
  
  
• 15 seconds with David Beckham – Adam Baidawi (2013)
  The offer has been laid out. A one-on-one interview with David Beckham. At a party. For 15 seconds. One question, two maybe. Also: I’m not sure it’s definitely David Beckham.
  
  
• After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet – Eli Saslow (2013)
  They had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel.
  
  
• Unreliable narrator – Ian Parker (2019)
  Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his début thriller, “The Woman in the Window.” His life contains even stranger twists.
  
  
• How to practice – Ann Patchett (2021)
  I wanted to get rid of my possessions, because my possessions stood between me and my death.