An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia

The Time in Between: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope

Nancy Tucker · 320 pages

Perfect: Anorexia and Me

Emily Halban · 333 pages

A remarkable memoir of a girl's journey through anorexia.Emily Halban developed anorexia in her final year at school. She went on to university at Oxford where her disease took on a powerful dimension. By her final year she was so debilitated that she had to sit her exams in a separate room where she could be fed continuously. With heartbreaking candour and poignant intimacy, Emily vividly chronic

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Marya Hornbacher · 301 pages

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustains both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sen

Lighter Than My Shadow

Katie Green · 508 pages

Like most kids, Katie was a picky eater. She'd sit at the table in silent protest, hide uneaten toast in her bedroom, listen to parental threats that she'd have to eat it for breakfast. But in any life a set of circumstance can collide, and normal behavior might soon shade into something sinister, something deadly.

Elena Vanishing

Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle · 296 pages

Stick Figure

Lori Gottlieb · 230 pages

After happening upon the diary she kept when she was 11 years old, Gottlieb was moved to publish this chronicle of her struggle with anorexia nearly 20 years after she wrote it. In the late 1970s, she lived with her parents and brother in Beverly Hills, where Gottlieb's loneliness and concern about looking attractive to boys swiftly transformed into an obsession with dieting, although she had neve

Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too

Jenni Schaefer, Thom Rutledge · 192 pages

The author describes her life battling an eating disorder and provides exercises to help people deal with their own problems.

Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves

Crystal Renn · 256 pages

Brain over Binge: Why I Was Bulimic, Why Conventional Therapy Didn't Work, and How I Recovered for Good

Kathryn Hansen · 307 pages

"Brain over Binge is different than other eating disorder books, which typically present binge eating and purging as symptoms of complex emotional and psychological problems. Kathryn Hansen, the author of Brain over Binge, disputes this mainstream idea and explains why traditional eating disorder therapy failed her and fails many. Kathryn explains how she came to understand her bulimia in a new wa

I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy · 320 pages

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a

What I Lost

Alexandra Ballard · 395 pages

When sixteen-year-old Elizabeth is sent to the Wallingfield Psychiatric Facility's Residential Treatment Center, she encounters girls whose problems seem much greater than her own anorexia.

Unbearable Lightness

Portia de Rossi · 320 pages

Known for her roles on the hit TV shows "Ally McBeal" and "Arrested Development," de Rossi delivers a revelatory and searing account of the years she spent secretly suffering from anorexia and bulimia, all the while living under the glare of Hollywood's bright lights.

Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia

Harriet Brown · 272 pages

"Millions of families are affected by eating disorders, which usually strike young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty. But current medical practice ties these families' hands when it comes to helping their children recover. Conventional medical wisdom dictates separating the patient from the family and insists that "it's not about the food," even as a family watches a child waste away b

In the Water They Can't See You Cry: A Memoir

Amanda Beard, Rebecca Paley · 256 pages

The Passion of Alice

Stephanie Grant · 266 pages

It's 1984. Alice Forrester is a twenty-five-year-old anorexic who has just experienced heart failure when she is taken to the emergency room of Seaview Hospital, renowned for its eating disorders clinic. There, family and friends in league with staff and doctors intently try to steer her toward recovery. But it's not that simple. She passes time at the clinic waiting to find out what is wrong with

The Life of Hunger

Amelie Nothomb · 160 pages

The daughter of a Belgian diplomat, Amelie had an itinerant childhood, ranging from Tokyo to Peking and Paris to New York by way of Bangladesh. Recounting these formative journeys right up to her return to Japan in 1989, and the Kobe earthquake, this work is an examination of the self.

Wintergirls

Laurie Halse Anderson · 288 pages

*“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls. “Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another. I am that girl. I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.* Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what

Believarexic

J.J. Johnson · 464 pages

Drinking

Caroline Knapp · 286 pages

Dancing on My Grave

Gelsey Kirkland, Greg Lawrence · 363 pages

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · 288 pages

The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories s

Lucky

Alice Sebold · 256 pages

In this memoir, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was transformed when at age 18 she was raped and beaten in a park near her college campus

We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction

Nic Sheff

The Only Pirate at the Party

Lindsey Stirling, Brooke S. Passey · 258 pages

Dancing electronic violinist Lindsey Stirling shares her unconventional journey in a memoir filled with the energy, persistence, and humor that have helped her successfully pursue a passion outside the box.