Have you ever had the serendipitous experience of reading a complementary nonfiction and fiction book close together? I love it when this happens: when I just happen to read a nonfiction book about, say, a historical event, and then coincidentally pick up a novel exploring that very thing, or something satisfyingly tangential. Some books are better together, whether you stumble upon a book flight or purposefully plan themed reading.

Today’s post is inspired by that idea of book flights—I’ve long adopted the practice of grouping books into “flights” to allow readers (and myself!) to sample, compare, and learn. I borrowed this idea from a wine tasting practice, but love it even more for the literary life. Whether the groupings comes in twos, threes, fours, or more, these purposeful pairings help me understand themes and ideas in deeper and more nuanced ways than would be available to me were I reading the works in isolation. And as a giant nerd (a term we use with affection around here), I find great pleasure in these richer reading experiences.

There are so many different topics and pairings we could cover. Today’s flights include the Irish Troubles, codebreaking, hostage situations, and more. However you choose to approach these book flights, I hope you find an unexpected pairing or thoroughly intriguing topic. (We welcome your flights in comments!)

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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe and Trust Her by Flynn Berry

Investigative journalism at its finest, Say Nothing examines the IRA’s abduction of Jean McConville, a mother of ten, from her Belfast home in 1972 during The Troubles. Her family never saw her again. A little more than thirty years later, human bones are found on a beach and later identified as McConville. The case serves as an example of the violence, fear, and paranoia during that time, as well as a jumping off point to explore the IRA’s goal for a united Ireland, the repercussions of guerrilla warfare, and whether their ends ever justified the means. A riveting and heartbreaking read, this was adapted into a TV miniseries on FX.

Trust Her, Edgar Award-winning Berry’s standalone companion to her 2021 bestseller Northern Spy, continues to explore the Irish Republican Army’s activity in the post-Brexit era. The story starts with a bang when the IRA kidnaps journalist Tessa on a remote highway outside Dublin and delivers an ultimatum: persuade her MI5 handler to become an informant, or someone she loves will die. Tessa and her sister Marian had become deeply involved with the IRA several years before, but she thought those entanglements were behind them. Now she fears for her and her son’s safety, as she knows the IRA will make good on their threats. Berry delivers a riveting spy thriller and a fascinating exploration of women’s involvement in the IRA and the subsequent impact on families, neighborhoods, and entire communities. 

Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh and Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by RF Kuang

Opium may be a small plant but Smoke and Ashes details its ties to colonialism, corporations, powerful families and institutions in the US, and contemporary globalism. In this “object biography” of opium, Ghosh explores its economic and cultural impact on Britain, India, and China, and how those effects still linger today. With sweeping scope and intricate detail, Ghosh lays out how the British Empire exported opium from India to China as a way of sustaining the Empire, regardless of the cost of addiction to those they exploited. Literature lovers will notice many cameos of authors through the ages in these pages (Orwell, Kipling, Dickens, and more). 

Set primarily in 1830s Oxford, the workers at the translation institute Babel literally fuel the British Empire by combining their language skills with precious silver bars. While I loved the academic setting and band of four fast friends in this historical fantasy, Kuang’s engagement with the complexities of race, power, privilege, and the opium trade are what really ground Babel. There’s much philosophizing about the art of translation and discussion of what the practice actually involves, which I found insightful and fascinating. 

How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

How the Word Is Passed, poet and journalist Smith’s first full-length nonfiction work, explores the legacy of enslavement in the United States, and to do so he takes his readers on a tour of sorts, visiting nine physical monuments crucial to that history, like Jefferson’s Monticello, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, Angola Prison, New York City, and finally Senegal’s Gorée Island. Each visit is packed with stories from both past and present, as Smith examines the site’s history and explores what that means for us today. This is a stunner. I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the author.

By exploring the stories of two sisters, who met different fates in Ghana more than 200 years ago, Gyasi traces subtle lines of cause and effect through the centuries, illuminating how deeds of ages past still haunt all of us today. Homegoing, her popular debut novel, traces the generations of one family over a period of 250 years, showing the devastating effects of enslavement and racism from multiple perspectives, in multiple settings. For the first hundred pages I didn’t quite grasp what Gyasi was up to, but when it hit me it was powerful. (The family tree in the front of the book helped me track the characters throughout.) A brilliant concept, beautifully executed.

The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston and Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

In The Hot Zone, a 1994 nonfiction thriller, Preston details the emergence of the ebola virus in a pageturning, day-by-day, truth-is-scarier-than-fiction account, starting with the initial discovery of the virus in the Washington, D.C. suburbs—which kills 90 percent of its victims—and tracing its origin back to the central African rain forest. Meanwhile, a secret team of scientists and soldiers are deployed to stop the outbreak. Riveting and terrifying.

In this 2020 award-winning historical novel, O’Farrell takes a few known facts about Shakespeare’s wife and family and, from this spare skeleton, builds out a lush, vivid world with Hamnet. The devastating story centers on Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, who is torn apart by grief when their son Hamnet dies from the Black Death plague at age 11. Soon after, Shakespeare writes Hamlet—and O’Farrell convincingly posits that the two events are closely tied. In her distinctive style, O’Farrell takes you to the heart of what really matters in life, making you feel such a deep sense of loss for Hamnet that you won’t look at your own life the same way.

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah and Hum If You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais

Born a Crime is a collection of coming-of-age essays about growing up during apartheid in South Africa. The Daily Show host does a masterful job of alternating the deathly serious with the laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes even combining the two. Noah’s birth to a white Swiss father and Black Xhosa mother was considered a crime and his mother kept him mostly indoors so as to not alert the government to his existence. His mischievous childhood and unconventional youth provide wonderful fodder for not-quite-polite (so much potty humor!) but always entertaining stories. Trevor Noah narrates the audiobook, which I highly recommend.

In 1970s Johannesburg, race is everything, yet two people who are legally deemed to be incompatible in apartheid South Africa are thrown together following the 1976 Soweto Uprising in Hum If You Don’t Know the Words. After white police open fire on peacefully protesting Black schoolchildren, 9-year-old Robin Conrad’s life is shattered when her parents are killed in the backlash. Meanwhile, Beauty Mbali’s daughter goes missing, and Beauty’s search for her coincidentally lands her a job as Robin’s caretaker. As time stretches on, Beauty grows to care deeply for this child she is being paid to “love,” and Robin, while fiercely possessive of Beauty, is keenly aware her parents wouldn’t approve of this relationship.

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy and The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Code Girls highlights the American female code breakers who helped win World War II, but whose vital work has gone unsung for decades. 10,000 American women served the U.S. Army and Navy as cryptanalysts; their call to action came in the form of a letter that asked them two short questions: did they like crossword puzzles, and were they engaged to be married? Despite their critical role in protecting the Allies and exposing the plans of the Axis powers, their work in cryptanalysis was kept secret. Mundy conducted extensive research to capture their story, including interviews with surviving code girls. A fascinating, thoroughly researched, and well-told true account.

Set in World War II Britain, The Rose Code follows three unlikely women united in a common cause: breaking codes at Bletchley Park. Well-to-do Osla is a society girl, often accused of having more beauty than brains. Determined Mab grew up poor in London’s east end, and seeks a better life for herself and her young sister. And miserable Beth, doormat daughter to the overbearing mother who billets Bletchley Park girls to help the war effort. This book grabbed me from the opening pages, but I’ll admit I began turning them faster when we veered into spy thriller territory. Solidly entertaining—I especially enjoyed the story on audio, as narrated by Saskia Maarleveld.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

The author of Never Split the Difference is a former hostage negotiator for the FBI. His workplace tales were fascinating, of course: he specialized in negotiating international kidnappings, and those did NOT play out like I expected. I was impressed at how he took those principles and applied them to everyday life—like negotiating a salary, or buying a house, or having normal, everyday conversations with your kids. 

In Famous Last Words, London literary agent Camilla drops her daughter at daycare and heads to work after her maternity leave. That’s when she gets the call: her husband is involved in a hostage situation. Then she learns he’s not a hostage; he’s holding the hostages—but how could that be true of her kind-hearted, fun-loving husband? Camilla won’t get any answers, because law enforcement’s attempts to apprehend her husband are unsuccessful. The story’s second perspective comes from hostage negotiator Niall, whose life and career were ruined by that same botched siege. Like Camilla, he can’t let go of the baffling and still-unexplained events of that day. When new evidence surfaces years later, the two team up to figure out what really happened.

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley and Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson

After Bringley’s older brother died from cancer, he quit his dream job at The New Yorker and spent the next ten years working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His brother’s death rocked him and his life could no longer go on as usual. It was supposed to be a temporary escape where he could disappear into the background for a while but it wound up being a source of solace. In All the Beauty in the World, he details the ins and outs of being a guard, from bonding with his colleagues in the locker room to roaming the museum floors to how the guards close down the museum at night. 

Coulson worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for decades, holding a variety of positions, and Metropolitan Stories, her novel in short stories, takes us behind the scenes of the museum. Sometimes the stories feel extremely down-to-earth for such a lofty place; sometimes they’re downright surreal, like the story told from the perspective of an 18th-century French chair who wishes someone would come sit in it. 

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

In The Place of Tides, a charming blend of nature writing and memoir, travel writer Rebanks recounts a magical summer spent on Norway’s Vega archipelago. Not long ago Rebanks reached a place of personal and professional weariness. His chosen antidote? Traveling to Norway’s sparsely populated islands just under the Arctic circle, where a handful of old-timers still engage in the traditional work of gathering eider duck down. Under the tutelage of “duck woman” Anna, Rebanks learns about the history of the region and its fading way of life. This lyrical, meditative work and its vivid picture of the Norwegian islands is the best kind of armchair travel. 

In Wild Dark Shore, Dominic Salt and his three children live on Shearwater Island, not far from Antarctica. He tends to the world’s largest seabank, which used to teem with researchers. Now only the Salts remain despite the rising sea levels. When a woman almost drowns while trying to reach the island by boat, Dominic’s teenage daughter rescues her and drags her ashore. As the woman gets to know the family and gain insight into the secrets they’re keeping, she’s hiding a secret mission of her own. A brooding, character-driven, page-turning read.

Philosophy for Polar Explorers by Erling Kagge and The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Philosophy for Polar Explorers, a short and compact book from Norwegian author and explorer Kagge, is part philosophy, part grand adventure, and part survival tale. Kagge was the first person to visit all three poles by foot, trekking the North Pole, South Pole, and Mt. Everest. He records his adventures in this small volume, along with philosophical musings prompted by his journeys. The stunning photos from his polar expeditions and related illustrations upped my appreciation for the stories recounted in these pages. Translated by Kenneth Stevens.

Bradley’s gripping debut, The Ministry of Time, unfolds in a near future where the British government employs time travel, as administered by a clunky bureaucracy. Our unnamed narrator takes a position as companion to the devastatingly handsome Commander Graham Gore, of the lost 1845 Royal Navy Arctic Expedition. She’s hired largely because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia, as her charge is also a refugee of sorts—not from another country, but from history. At once fast-paced and deeply philosophical, Bradley weaves together a spy plot, a love story, and heaps of droll British humor as her characters converse on race, gender, inherited trauma, and imperial legacy. A 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide pick.

Which of these pairings most intrigues you? Do you have any good nonfiction-fiction pairings to recommend? Please share in the comments.

P.S. Books that are better together and 50 engrossing and adorable rom com books and movies for your Valentine’s weekend.