Tombs and Tomes is Congressional Cemetery's book club. We meet every other month in our historic Chapel (unless otherwise noted), and we discuss primarily non-fiction books. Our book selections have no rhyme and reason; however, our choices tend to stray towards the macabre, as is natural for a cemetery book club. Our very first meeting was in September 2013 and we chose to read Stiff, by Mary Roach (pictured here with Doug Graves, Congressional Cemetery's mascot and NOT a real skeleton!).

The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other–a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths [...]

Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who are London's outcast dead and why is David [...]

Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both. Two men, each [...]

By: Michiko Iwasaka and Barre Toelken The Japanese have ambivalent attitudes toward death, deeply rooted in pre-Buddhist traditions. In this scholarly but accessible work, authors Iwasaka and Toelken show that [...]

"Utterly fascinating." —Bill Bryson A groundbreaking exploration of the science of why and how we age and die—from Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan. The knowledge of death is so [...]

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this [...]

Discover the science of forensics through Agatha Christie's novels Agatha Christie is the bestselling novelist of all time, and nearly every story she ever wrote involves one―or, more commonly, several―dead [...]

Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud. In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed [...]