Lives Other Than My Own

The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon

Donald Hall · 258 pages

From the Publisher: Donald Hall's celebrated book of poems Without was written for his wife, Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995. Hall returns to this powerful territory in The Best Day the Worst Day, a work of prose that is equally "a work of art, love, and generous genius" (Liz Rosenberg, Boston Globe). Jane Kenyon was nineteen years younger than Donald Hall and a student poet at the University of M

I Still Believe

Jeremy Camp, Phil Newman · 224 pages

A leading artist on the contemporary Christian scene, Jeremy Camp has gained a sizable fan following. I Still Believe follows Jeremy's life from growing up in Indiana and his struggles as a teen, to his love for his first wife Melissa and her untimely passing, to his growing music ministry and re-found hope and love in his wife Adrienne.

The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross · 286 pages

Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death

Katy Butler · 322 pages

"An exquisitely written, expertly reported memoir and expose; of modern medicine that leads the way to more humane, less invasive end-of-life care based on the author's acclaimed New York Times Magazine piece. This is the story of one daughter's struggle to allow her parents the peaceful, natural deaths they wanted and to investigate the larger forces in medicine that stood in the way. When doctor

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Lori Gottlieb · 432 pages

From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world—where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crash

Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward

Lisa Niemi Swayze · 323 pages

Life's That Way

Jim Beaver · 303 pages

Lifes That Way is a modern-day Book of Job. In August 2003, Jim Beaver, a character actor whom many know from the popular HBO series Deadwood, and his wife Cecily learned what they thought was the worst news possible their daughter Maddie was autistic. Then six weeks later the roof fell inCecily was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. Jim immediately began writing a nightly e-mail as a way to k

The End of Your Life Book Club

Will Schwalbe · 344 pages

This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother, who start a "book club" that brings them together as the mother faces an advanced form of pancreatic cancer. The result is a profoundly moving tale of loss that is also a joyful, and often humorous, celebration of life.

From Scratch

Tembi Locke · 352 pages

Goodbye, I Love You

Carol Lynn Pearson · 240 pages

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · 426 pages

From Wikipedia: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (ISBN 0-330-48455-9) is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the cancer-related deaths of his parents. The book was an enormous commercial and critical success, reaching number one on The New York Times bestseller list and being nominated as a final

Nights in Rodanthe

Nicholas Sparks · 217 pages

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks comes a tender story of hope and joy; of sacrifice and forgiveness -- a moving reminder that love is possible at any age, at any time, and often comes when we least expect it. At forty-five, Adrienne Willis must rethink her entire life when her husband abandons her for a younger woman. Reeling with heartache and in search of a respite,

Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

Michael Ausiello · 309 pages

Television industry journalist Michael Ausiello tells the story of his final year with his partner of thirteen years, Kit Cowan--diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of neuroendocrine cancer--while revisiting the many memories that preceded it, and describes how their undeniably powerful bond carried them through all manner of difficulties, with humor always front and center of the relat

The Long Goodbye

Meghan O'Rourke · 306 pages

In this eloquent, somber memoir about the death of her mother and grieving aftermath, poet and journalist O'Rourke (Halflife) ponders the eternal human question: how do we live with the knowledge that we will one day die?

Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir

Paul Monette · 342 pages

This "tender and lyrical" memoir (New York Times Book Review) remains one of the most compelling documents of the AIDS era-"searing, shattering, ultimately hope inspiring account of a great love story" (San Francisco Examiner). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and the winner of the PEN Center West literary award.

Wave

Sonali Deraniyagala · 227 pages

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles throu

Tuesdays with Morrie

Mitch Albom · 192 pages

Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Sellers List for 23 combined weeks in 2000, and remained on the New York Times best-selling list for more than four years after. In 2006, Tuesdays with Morrie was

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · 256 pages

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve me

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?

Roz Chast · 228 pages

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderl

What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love

Carole Radziwill · 268 pages

A memoir about a girl from a working class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a prince, Anthony Radziwill, nephew of John F. Kennedy. Carole DiFalco Radziwill grew up in a suburb with a large, eccentric cast of characters. At the age of nineteen, she struck out for New York. Her career at ABC News led her to the refugee camps of Cambodia, a bunker in Tel Aviv, and th

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

Nina Riggs · 299 pages

Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer—one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal. How does a dying person learn to live each day "unattached to outcome"? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Michelle Zauner · 256 pages

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her gra

Dying: A Memoir

Cory Taylor · 160 pages