Why am I passionate about this?

Allen Klein is a former hospice volunteer and the former director of The Life-Death Transitions Institute in San Francisco. He has also spoken at over 100 hospice events around the world. In addition, several of his books have dealt with death, dying, and grief. Among them are, The Healing Power of Humor, The Courage to Laugh, and Embracing Life after Loss. Klein’s interest in the connection between humor and death and dying came out of the death of his wife, who had a wonderful sense of humor. He saw how humor helped her, and those around her, cope with this challenging circumstance.


I wrote

Embracing Life After Loss: A Gentle Guide for Growing Through Grief

By Allen Klein,

Book cover of Embracing Life After Loss: A Gentle Guide for Growing Through Grief

What is my book about?

After my wife died at a young age, I searched for grief books that would ease my pain. Most did…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Courage to Grieve: The Classic Guide to Creative Living, Recovery, and Growth Through Grief

Allen Klein Why did I love this book?

Experiencing a loss may feel overwhelming. That is why you need to read this comforting book; it can ease that feeling. Written by a Gestalt therapist, this book feels like the author is in the room with you helping you deal with your sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, and encouraging you to take part in life again after your loss.

By Judy Tatelbaum,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Courage to Grieve as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Profound loss and disappointment are emotions that each of us will experience at some point in our lives. Loss is one of the most difficult experiences to come to terms with. The Courage to Grieve explores how we can deal with every kind of grief, revealing:

- How grief manifests itself in many ways, ranging from anguish, exhaustion, emptiness, resentment, longing, tension, confusion, sleeplessness and sometimes the temporary loss of the will to live.
- How we can help ourselves and others to cope with the immediate experience of death and the grief and mourning period that follows.
- How…


Book cover of Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying

Allen Klein Why did I love this book?

Technically this is not really a “grief” book in that it doesn’t provide information on how to manage a loss. What it does provide, as the subtitle says, An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying. In other words, how to live life fully knowing that someday we will no longer be here.

By Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first book that explains how to open to the immensity of living with death—and how participating fully in life is the perfect preparation for whatever may come next.

In Who Dies?, the Levines provide calm compassion rather than the frightening melodrama of death.


Book cover of Living When a Loved One Has Died

Allen Klein Why did I love this book?

This book explores what to expect during your mourning, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to work through feelings of loss. A well-written guide to ease suffering while moving through the many facets of grief.

By Earl A. Grollman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Living When a Loved One Has Died as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Grief is a universal emotion, the pain of loss will affect all of us at some stage of our lives, but grief is also the most personal of emotions, you feel as though the pain will last forever and has never been felt by anyone else in this way.

This is a book that will support you, allow you to grieve in your own time and your own way while reassuring you of the normality of the process. Grief is something that people do not get over but are changed by for the rest of their lives.

Death only ends…


Book cover of Awakening from Grief: Finding the Way Back to Joy

Allen Klein Why did I love this book?

This meditation teacher shows those who have experienced a loss new ways to embrace the pain so that they can feel joy again. Written for all types of loss, Welshons shows readers how grief can provide a unique opportunity to live a fuller and richer life in spite of our losses.

By John E. Welshons,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Awakening from Grief as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this remarkable book, Welshons weaves together his own personal awakening with those of others he's counseled to bestow a deeply felt and exquisitely expressed primer on dealing with grief. We learn new ways to embrace our pain so that our hearts can open to feel joy. We discover how grieving gives us the unique opportunity to develop deeper and fuller life experiences. Written for people who have experienced any type of loss—whether through death, divorce, or disappointment—this compelling and memorable guide will take its place among the insightful works of grief management.


Book cover of On Death & Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy & Their Own Families

Allen Klein Why did I love this book?

Not exactly a guide on how to deal with grief but an important groundbreaking book dealing with death and dying. A classic in the field helping readers understand the five stages we go through in the dying process. A must-read to better understand life’s final days.

By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked On Death & Dying as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages of grief, first formulated in this hugely influential work forty years ago, are now part of our common understanding of bereavement. The five stages were first identified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her work with dying patients at the University of Chicago and were considered phases that all or most people went through, when faced with the prospect of their own death. They are now often accepted as a response to any major life change.

However, in spite of these terms being in general use, the subject of death is still surrounded…


Explore my book 😀

Embracing Life After Loss: A Gentle Guide for Growing Through Grief

By Allen Klein,

Book cover of Embracing Life After Loss: A Gentle Guide for Growing Through Grief

What is my book about?

After my wife died at a young age, I searched for grief books that would ease my pain. Most did not. Most told me about how I might be depressed, lose sleep or not be able to eat. That is not what I needed to hear. What I needed at the time was a book that would hold my hand, comfort me, and help me through the process. Finding none, I wrote my own.

Embracing Life After Loss does exactly that. With simple easy-to-read thoughts and inspiring quotations on which each page is built, it leads the reader through five steps from Loss to Laughter. As Stephen Kiernan, author of Last Rights, said about the book, “If life sometimes feels like a bucket full of small dark stones, Allen Klein’s insights are like bright pennies waiting to be found.”

Book cover of The Courage to Grieve: The Classic Guide to Creative Living, Recovery, and Growth Through Grief
Book cover of Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
Book cover of Living When a Loved One Has Died

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The Nightmarchers

By J. Lincoln Fenn,

Book cover of The Nightmarchers

J. Lincoln Fenn Author Of The Nightmarchers

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.

J.'s book list on horror that will make you cancel your travel plans

What is my book about?

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.

Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…

The Nightmarchers

By J. Lincoln Fenn,

What is this book about?

From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?

It all seems like ancient family history to…


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Interested in death, grief, and mourning?

Death 392 books
Grief 90 books
Mourning 151 books