Books like Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

Richard Preston’s nonfiction account investigates the biology, history, and global impact of African hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Marburg, weaving scientific analysis with the stories of outbreaks and laboratory research.

High‑school dramas, romance, and the trials of a princess‑in‑training student body president navigate friendships, love, and the everyday realities of modern teens.

A fact‑based biography of Mary Mallon, the infamous "Typhoid Mary," using archival photos, primary documents, and scholarly analysis to examine her life, the legal and medical response to her, and the broader issues of disease, rights, and public health.

Mei‑ling struggles in Vancouver as she works after school to raise the head‑tax money needed to bring her mother and brother from China to Canada before the Exclusion Act bars further immigration.

A fictional diary of thirteen‑year‑old Nzingha, a West African princess who loves hunting and dreams of leading her people against the Portuguese slave traders.

Through a series of messages hidden in her grandmother’s ancestral jar, 7th‑century Korean Princess Sŏndŏk of Silla laments her forbidden access to astronomy, her yearning to learn hidden in letters that survive to the present.

A football captain, Jordan Woods is determined to protect her team and her scholarship to a prestigious university. But when a hot new quarterback transfers to her high school, she's forced to face her deepest desires and insecurities.

Teenager Davy grapples with his grandmother’s death and a turbulent family life in New York, finding unexpected closeness with a classroom friend that evolves into a confusing and intimate bond.

A socially awkward teenager who has endured trauma and a parental divorce moves to a new high school, where he uses diary entries to confront and reinvent himself amid complex family dynamics and adolescent relationships.

In this book, historian Judith Walzer Leavitt tells the remarkable story of Mary Mallon, the woman known as "Typhoid Mary." Combining social history with biography, Leavitt brings to life early-twentieth-century New York City, a world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women. She re-creates the excitement of the early days of microbiology and explores the conflicting perspectives of journalists, public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself. Mary Mallon was the first healthy carrier of typhoid to be carefully traced in North America, but there were other healthy carriers - over 400 in New York City alone by the 1930s - whose treatment was much less harsh. Why did Mallon's case turn out as it did? As Leavitt shows, the answers have to do with popular prejudices as well as with the legal dimensions of Mallon's case. By exploring the many contexts for Mallon's experience, Leavitt provides a rich and many-layered chronicle of a woman's personal tragedy and a society's dilemma. She also explores the continuing cultural significance of Typhoid Mary, describing the ways Mallon's story has been reinterpreted in fiction, drama, and historians' narratives up to the present.

When a group of classmates declare that all girls have cooties, Katie must swap places and try to undo the chaos before it turns into a full‑blown mess.

Seventh‑grade girl Mackenzie faces a whirl of challenges—friendships shift, her diary disappears, and a talent contest seems out of reach—testifying to the ups and downs of adolescence.