These are Running Books but they are not about running but have running as part of the plot.

From Goodreads:

A gripping new thriller from a best-selling author – When a lone runner is found dead on Miami Beachs North Shore, Detective Sam Beckets first concern is for his adopted daughter, Cathy. Cathy is also a runner, and shes vulnerable. As Sam and his team start to investigate, a connection emerges with another homicide on Pompano Beach, and others are drawn into the web, including Kerry Flanagan, a charismatic runner to whom Cathy feels powerfully drawn

From Goodreads:

Molly and Robin Snow are sisters, and like all sisters they share a deep bond that sustains them through good times and bad. Their careers are flourishing—Molly is a horticulturist and Robin is a world-class runner—and they are in the prime of their lives. So when Molly receives the news that Robin has suffered a massive heart attack, she couldn’t be more shocked. At the hospital, the Snow family receives a grim prognosis: Robin may never regain consciousness.

As Robin’s parents and siblings struggle to cope, the complex nature of their relationship is put to the ultimate test. Molly has always lived in Robin’s shadow and her feelings for her have run the gamut, from love to resentment and back. The last time they spoke, they argued. But now there is so much more at stake. Molly’s parents fold under the devastating circumstances, and her brother retreats into the cool reserve that is shattering his own family. It’s up to Molly to make the tough decisions, and she soon makes discoveries that destroy some of her most cherished beliefs about the sister she thought she knew.

From Goodreads:

Running the Rift follows the progress of Jean Patrick Nkuba from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life. A naturally gifted athlete, he sprints over the thousand hills of Rwanda and dreams of becoming his country’s first Olympic medal winner in track. But Jean Patrick is a Tutsi in a world that has become increasingly restrictive and violent for his people. As tensions mount between the Hutu and Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream that running might deliver him, and his people, from the brutality around them.

From Goodreads:

In the Pittsburgh Marathon, 18,000 people from all over the world will participate. Over 9,500 will run the half marathon, 4,000 will run brief stretches as part of a relay. 4,500 people will attempt to cover the full 26.2 miles. Over 200 of the participants will quit, realizing it just wasn’t their day. More than 100 will get injured and require medical treatment. And one man is going to be murdered.

When Dr. Cyprus Keller lines up to start the race, he knows who is going to die for one simple reason. He’s going to kill them.

As a professor of Criminology at Three Rivers University, and a former police officer, Dr. Cyprus Keller is an expert in criminal behavior and victimology. However, when one of his female students is murdered and his graduate assistant attempts to kill him, Keller finds himself frantically swinging back and forth between being a suspect and a victim. When the police assign a motive to the crimes that Keller knows cannot be true, he begins to ask questions that somebody out there does not want answered.

In the course of 26.2 miles, Keller recounts how he found himself encircled by a series of killings that have shocked the city, while literally pursuing his prey – the man who was behind it all.

This was a cool email that I got from the author:

Darlene,

 I stumbled across your post on Shut Up + Run and I wanted to drop you an note and say that I hope you enjoy (or enjoyed) Resolve.  It is a great way to start the week when an author is on a website and suddenly sees that someone is talking about his book.  Feel free to let me know if you liked Resolve and — if you did — I hope you will spread the word.  If you didn’t… then I hope you don’t tell ANYONE. 

 Take care,
J.J. Hensley

From Goodreads:

Once a Runner is the story of Quenton Cassidy, a collegiate runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the political and cultural turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team.

Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life: a head-to-head match with the greatest miler in history.

From Goodreads:

Caleb Oberest is an ultramarathon runner, who severed all ties to his family to race brutal 100-mile marathons across mountains. Shane Oberest is a sales rep for a  cutting-edge biotechnology firm, creating new cures for the diseases of our time. Shane has spent his life longing to connect with his older brother, but the distance between them was always too vast.

Caleb’s running group live by strict rules, but Caleb is breaking one of them. He has fallen in love with a new member and her infant daughter.  When Caleb discovers that the baby has a fatal genetic disease, he reaches out to Shane. On the verge of becoming a father himself, Shane devises a plan that could save this baby and bring his lost brother home. But to succeed, both brothers will need to risk everything they have. And so each begins a dangerous race that will push them past their boundaries, and take all of Caleb’s legendary endurance to survive.

My opinion on all of the above books is the same. I liked reading them.  They were all very different but running was the one thing they had in common.

They aren’t all great books but I enjoyed that running was part of them and as runners, I think you will too.

Happy Running! Have you read any of these? What did you think? Any good running-related books to recommend?