85 books like 90 Minutes in Heaven

This is one of my all-time favorite books! Raised in India by missionary parents, Dr. Brand saw firsthand the effects of leprosy on the body. He trained as a doctor in England and returned to India where he pioneered the concept of the “gift of pain”—the idea that lepers’ “rotting” extremities resulted from the loss of sensation and subsequent infection, not the disease itself. A renowned surgeon, he was the first in the world to use reconstructive surgery on lepers, techniques he later applied to diabetics.

The book goes through the body, system by system, relating the physical body to the body of Christ. My favorite parts are Dr. Brand’s vivid stories of treating the “outcasts” society shuns but God does not.

As a registered nurse, South African writer Shirley Corder knew cancer from a medical standpoint, but she didn’t really know the disease until she heard the words “you have cancer.” In her book, she walks readers from diagnosis through surgery and cancer treatments to recovery, shedding God’s light along the path. Her subtle humor and genuine faith lighten a heavy subject. Though she never sugarcoats reality or implies that we should “just trust God and everything will turn out all right,” her book provides a shot of needed encouragement at a critical time.

Depression can sneak up on anyone, even a Christian comedian such as Chonda Pierce. Her busy schedule and constant pressure to make others laugh ran her own tank empty. Where did she turn? To God, of course. But she found that God often works through friends, family, and yes, even psychologists to haul people back onto their feet. With faith, hope, and humor, she exposes depression from the inside out and leads people from the dark into the light of Jesus. Though I’ve never experienced depression, I feel better armed should I ever meet this foe.

Another favorite! Raised by a single mom who spurred him to do his best, Ben Carson rose from a low-income, inner-city upbringing to become director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins by age thirty-three. He gained worldwide recognition for developing a technique to separate Siamese twins conjoined at the back of the head—the first successful operation of its kind. His strong faith, instilled in him by his mom, influenced every decision he made, making him a more compassionate and sensitive doctor. This book combines fascinating scenes from the surgical suite with a picture of a remarkable yet humble man who is an extraordinary role model for future generations.

Hideaway explores the question: what would happen if people who’ve had near-death experiences bring something back with them from the other side? Koontz offers two characters resuscitated after being clinically dead for more than half an hour, one who tastes Heaven while the other sees Hell. Is the carnage that follows the result of their angel/demon hitchhikers wreaking havoc among the living, or is something else at play? The novel offers unique perspective on the desire to return to the land of the dead, and how closely the forces of Heaven and Hell are linked to the realm of the living. 

Thinking about the hope of heaven kept my mental health positive while going through cancer treatments.

This book includes several near-death experiences of people all over the world who literally died for a moment and saw the afterlife. As a witness to the spiritual realm, they give us vivid descriptions of heaven and what they saw while their physical bodies were dead.

These amazing stories from people of different ages and religions point to the reality of a beautiful place that I can’t wait to experience after I die.

This long-lost early book on near-death experiences was written around the same time as Raymond Moody’s classic Life After Life, but totally independent of any knowledge of that more famous work.

Hampe was a German philosopher, and while the book made a huge splash in Germany it’s practically unknown to the English-speaking world, even though an excellent translation was published in the 1970s (finally now reprinted).

Hampe is a deep thinker though has a very engaging style. Knowing that he had his own NDE makes the book poignant and moving to read. What I find most interesting about it is the very different approach he took compared to Moody.

Rather than looking at the phenomenon as a scientific puzzle and focusing on the possibility that NDEs are evidence for an afterlife, Hampe was interested in their metaphysical implications. 

Technically this might be an adult book, but I read it as a teen and it gripped me completely. It was my first encounter with Connie Willis and I became an unconditional fan. This one is different from the other books on my list as it is a SciFi novel, starting with a medical deep dive into near-death experiences, or, more accurately, the replication of safe near-death experiences in labs… or are they? 

Willis is the queen of urgency, and throughout this unusual novel we are wrenched and rushed and held to the edge of our seat in suspense. The afterlife looms into every corner, every thought, every event, like another character – and best of all, it mostly looks like the sinking Titanic. It’s a wonderful blend of SciFi and historical novel, written like a thriller. I highly recommend it, though, I warn you, this is a monument… show more.

This is the most comprehensive book on Native American afterlife beliefs ever written.

What makes it especially interesting is that the author focuses on myths and legends of afterlife journeys – what he called “Orpheus myths.” He looks at them from many perspectives – historical and cultural – but most importantly experiential.

Writing almost 20 years before the popularization of near-death experiences in the Western world, Hultkrantz identified NDEs as a different type of experience from dreams or shamanic visions – and found that indigenous people did, too.

He also suggested that such experiences contributed to afterlife beliefs – that is, that they weren’t simply culturally created “stories” or hallucinations. Readable and entertaining as well as scholarly, it’s wonderful that this book is back in print after languishing in obscurity for decades!

Near-death experiences on the surface sound like they have no relationship to politics and economics. However, they allow us to make inferences about a “moral imperative” embedded within the structure of reality itself.

Near-death experiences are instances in which a person’s consciousness has remarkable perceptions—even though the person is sometimes clinically dead. In fact, the experiences are often reported to be “realer” than real. This perplexing phenomenon has been studied extensively by the University of Virginia’s Bruce Greyson, MD, and he explains in his book why many of these profound cases are likely not hallucinations. (And he further explained these concepts to me when I interviewed him for my podcast, Where Is My Mind?).

The life-changing messages from near-death experiences teach us that we are all interconnected at a deep and fundamental level. Many near-death-experience survivors even report that they relived their whole life, and they become each person… show more.