Books like Death becomes them by Alix Strauss

Mitch Albom’s memoir follows his weekly visits to former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz as Schwartz confronts terminal ALS, exploring life, death, and personal growth through their poignant teacher‑student bond.

When a teenage girl vanishes and her parents are murdered, a death‑row inmate claims innocence while his sister hires a grieving PI to uncover the truth.

Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920s puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture.Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda Sayre first caught the eye of F. Scott Fitzgerald to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings, to the Manhattan speakeasies where patrons partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life. This is the story of America's first sexual revolution, its first merchants of cool, its first celebrities, and its most sparkling advertisement for the right to pursue happiness.The men and women who made the flapper were a diverse lot. There was Coco Chanel, the French orphan who redefined the feminine form and silhouette, helping to free women from the torturous corsets and crinolines that had served as tools of social control. Three thousand miles away, Lois Long, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, christened herself "Lipstick" and gave New Yorker readers a thrilling entree into Manhattan's extravagant Jazz Age nightlife.In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America's first celebrities--Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood's great flapper triumvirate--fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers.Dallas-born fashion artist Gordon Conway and Utah-born cartoonist John Held crafted magazine covers that captured the electricity of the social revolution sweeping the United States.Bruce Barton and Edward Bernays, pioneers of advertising and public relations, taught big business how to harness the dreams and anxieties of a newly industrial America--and a nation of consumers was born.Towering above all were Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, whose swift ascent and spectacular fall embodied the glamour and excess of the era that would come to an abrupt end on Black Tuesday, when the stock market collapsed and rendered the age of abundance and frivolity instantly obsolete.With its heady cocktail of storytelling and big ideas, Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade.From the Hardcover edition.

Hollywood, Interrupted is a sometimes frightening, occasionally sad, and frequently hysterical odyssey into the darkest realms of showbiz pathology, the endless stream of meltdowns and flameouts, and the inexplicable behavior on the part of show business personalities. Charting celebrities from rehab to retox, to jails, cults, institutions, near-death experiences and the Democratic Party, Hollywood, Interrupted takes readers on a surreal field trip into the amoral belly of the entertainment industry. Each chapter -- covering topics including warped Hollywood child-rearing, bad medicine, hypocritical political maneuvering and the complicit media -- delivers a meticulously researched, interview-infused, attitude heavy dispatch which analyzes and deconstructs the myths created by the celebrities themselves. Celebrities somehow believe that it's their god-given right to inflict their pathology on the rest of us. Hollywood, Interrupted illustrates how these dysfunctional dilettantes are mad as hell... And we're not going to take it any more.

Rita Cosby’s investigative biography uncovers the true story of former Playboy playmate and celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, revealing the circumstances of her death, her legal battles, and her complex life as a Texas-born star.

Dahlia Dutton takes on a salvaging job at Augusta Winthrow's sprawling estate, only to discover a restless spirit lurking in the house and a forgotten cemetery that keeps a dark secret alive.

"This is a reference work covering 840 suicides initially reported in Daily Variety but also drawing attention from mainstream media. The people are from vaudeville, film, theatre, dance, music, literature (film writers), and other fields, 1905 through 2000. Accidentally self-inflicted deaths are omitted, except for a few controversial cases.". "The suicides of well-known personalities such as actress Peg Entwistle, the only person ever to commit suicide by jumping from the top of the Hollywood sign, Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge, believed to have overdosed on drugs, and Richard Farnsworth and Brian Keith, who shot themselves to end the misery of cancer, are among the entries. Also mentioned in less detail are the suicides of lesser-known entertainment figures.". "Each entry covers the person's personal and professional background, method of suicide, and place of burial, and in some instances includes statements taken from a suicide note."--BOOK JACKET.