The most recommended books about Washington D.C.

Engaging work of historical fiction with a supernatural element, featuring a strong black heroine living in Washington DC during the 30s.

Clara was born with the ability to see spirits and speak to them, and the main plot is about her quest – accompanied by other Gifted people – to fight a major threat from “the Over There.” The author brings in West African diaspora religions as well as historical persons, places, and events (I spent a lot of time Googling to find out more!). She deftly handles the constant fear that a person of color lives with as a fact of life, and the love story is believable and satisfying.

Lady Bird’s diary is worth reading no matter what you are studying. She is insightful, funny, and attentive to her unique perspective as First Lady. In terms of understanding Pat, the diary offers an outsider’s view from someone who understood Pat’s situation personally. The tidbits concerning their first post-election meeting and then subsequent visits provide evidence of Pat’s humor, humility, and kindness.

Dan Brown grabs you within the first few pages and holds on to you through the whole book. The pace is frantic and can leave you breathless at times.

There's a great character twist at the end but I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending. The story went so deep into the symbolic and mythical world, I guess I expected more. Perhaps I just wanted more.

I laughed out loud frequently while reading this book and when I wasn’t laughing out loud, I was smiling.

Susan Coll’s writing is satire, but it is very gentle satire: the author’s affection and sympathy for people is always clear, even as she is describing their ridiculously bumbling ways. I love all of her novels but this one, as the title suggests, is perfect for people who love books, set as it is in an indie bookstore full to overflowing with characters who embody all the ways that bookish people can be both loveable and ridiculous in their typically bookish ways.

The quiet endurance of grief. I love this small, meditative novella that captures the essence of grief as it continues to linger in the body, the mind, and the heart long past the comfortability of those around you.

While the story focuses on the main character, an aging, gay professor who has come to Washington, DC, for a visiting professorship after losing his mother to a long illness, each person encountered is grieving something in their own way (I truly love that Holleran mirrors the main character’s grief with that of Mary Todd Lincoln’s after losing her husband to an assassin but also still grieving the death of her son via a biography he’s reading).

What I find so beautiful about this book is that Holleran doesn’t go for the theatrics of grief. He keeps the story and the emotions calm, methodic, and persistent with such great care to craft… show more.

This series captured me from the very first page of the first book.

The Bishop isn’t the first book, but it was my favorite one from the series. Finally, my favorite serial killer has returned. (Yes, I pick my favorite killers in novels.) The paramedic is back but this time he’s left his career behind and teamed up with my newest favorite killer.

It quickly became clear that the killers weren’t really in love especially when the guy chains the girl to a dead body. However, it was a pretty gruesome yet intriguing scene. As a graduate who studied Criminal Justice & Legal Studies, I can attest, these books don’t disappoint. 

You’ve probably heard books and movies described as roller coaster rides. This one is part of a roller coaster ride.

The first two-hundred and thirty pages are the roller coaster going up the first big hill. The last one-hundred and forty pages is the roller coaster screaming down the big hill, going faster and faster and faster. The last part of this book is intense. I read those last one-hundred and forty pages in two sittings, staying up later than I intended. I haven’t read something that intense in some time.

Gorman does an amazing job of fleshing out the main characters. There is quite a variety of people involved in this story. Also, there are many points of view, but I didn’t have any trouble keeping them sorted.

This isn’t a mystery. I knew who the murderer was early on. Therefore, Gorman has to build intensity in other ways… show more.

The President’s House is marvelous two-volume work that is the most comprehensive history ever written about the White House. The book starts with the laying of the cornerstone, all the way through the Truman Renovation. The author writes the detailed history in the style of a page-turning novel! I had the honor of meeting the author, Dr. William Seale, during my first week working in the White House Usher's Office in 1986, a great guy!

Red Cross trainees were among the thousands of people who poured into Washington, D.C., during World War II, with Mary Brandon–in our book–arriving there for instruction in 1943. What was the city like?

Esteemed journalist David Brinkley shared his personal reminiscences of a 1940s-era Washington in this lively account, showing how the city morphed rapidly from a slow-moving Southern town into an initially ill-prepared wartime capital. Brinkley’s many anecdotes are amusing, astonishing, and always instructive, as when he noted that even though the army placed antiaircraft guns on roofs of government buildings, so few guns were available that some–it was later learned–were merely wood replicas.

Through Mary Brandon’s letters, I glimpsed wartime Washington. Brinkley’s book treated me to a full portrait.

Whistleblowers rely on the press to disseminate their disclosures. In matters of national security, however, the press has a long history of close personal and professional bonds with the government that has curbed revelations. The Georgetown Set offers a fascinating glimpse into the small circle of elite officials, journalists, publishers, and public intellectuals who gathered for cocktail and dinner parties in their high-end neighborhood of Washington, DC. In addition to giving a fly-on-the-wall sense of how Cold War policies and public opinion were made, Herken’s book illuminates the individual and cultural shifts that contributed to the rise of national security disclosures in the 1960s and 1970s. This history is essential for understanding how the evolving dynamics between elite politicians and the press continue to shape the culture of whistleblowing and accountability today.