Seems like you can’t swing a weeded book these days without hitting a true crime podcast. But having a large swathe of our communities so engaged with a narrative—that’s good news for libraries, because we traffic in helping folks find their next obsession. But it ain’t all true crime; this episode also touches on another kind of graphic storytelling—the graphic novel, and why they’re so important to libraries. Truly, this episode contains multitudes.

You can find the full show notes, with links to Booklist reviews where available, at www.booklistonline.com/shelf-care.

Here’s what we talked about:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. By John Carreyrou.

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. By Christian T. Miller and Ken Armstrong.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. By Michelle McNamara.

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir. By Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich.

My Friend Dahmer. Written and illustrated by Derf Backderf.

American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century. By Maureen Callahan.

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession. By Rachel Monroe.

Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To-Guide. By Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. By Michelle McNamara. Read by Gabra Zackman.

The Cheerleaders. By Kara Thomas. Read by Phoebe Strole.

Dannemora: Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State. By Charles A. Gardner. Read by Jonathan Yen.

Dark Sacred Night. By Michael Connelly. Read by Titus Welliver.

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. By Kirk Wallace Johnson, Read by MacLeod Andrews.

Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything. By Nancy Martin. Read by Suzie Althens.

A Tale of Two Murders: Guilt, Innocence, and the Execution of Edith Thompson. By Laura Thompson. Read by Jilly Bond.

Sadie. By Courtney Summers. Read by Dan Bittner.

The Killer Across the Table. By John E. Douglas. Read by Jonathan Groff.

Along Came a Spider. By James Patterson. Read by Taye Diggs.

This Was Our Pact. Written and illustrated by Ryan Andrews.

ALA Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table