Here are 87 books that Blood Orange Night fans have personally recommended if you like
Blood Orange Night.
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I came to writing later in life – at age forty-two. Writing was something I had always wanted to do. Still, it wasn’t until I experienced something that was in some ways extraordinary and in some ways prevalent–the inadequate treatment of maternal mental health and maternal health in general–that I felt my story had to be told. While maternal mental illnesses are expected, there is a shortage of books on the topic. When I was deep inside my illness, I searched for any story that might mirror my own and had difficulty finding one. With this list, I hope to help anyone who needs a hand to reach out to.
This book will be among the best books about motherhood and madness and the best books I have ever read. A beautiful and heartbreaking memoir of a young mom who suffered from post-partum psychosis, it’s the one book that most closely mirrors my own struggles.
Cho delicately explores not only her devastating experience but also the guilt and shame surrounding a pregnancy that doesn’t look like how it does in the movies and doesn’t turn out the way we had anticipated. I rarely reread books, but I’ve reached for this book many times; the pages are well-worn with love and admiration.
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'A beautifully written account of postpartum psychosis, and the ties, blessings and burdens of family' - NIGELLA LAWSON
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE
*Observer Book of the Week*
*A Guardian Memoir of the Year 2020*
*Harper's Bazaar 10 Women Who Will Shape What You Watch, See and Read in 2020*
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'Striking and original' - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times
'Completely devastating. Completely heartbreaking' - Daisy Johnson
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Catherine Cho's son was three months old when she and her husband left home to introduce him to their families.
Catherine…
I came to writing later in life – at age forty-two. Writing was something I had always wanted to do. Still, it wasn’t until I experienced something that was in some ways extraordinary and in some ways prevalent–the inadequate treatment of maternal mental health and maternal health in general–that I felt my story had to be told. While maternal mental illnesses are expected, there is a shortage of books on the topic. When I was deep inside my illness, I searched for any story that might mirror my own and had difficulty finding one. With this list, I hope to help anyone who needs a hand to reach out to.
I picked this book up at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and didn’t put it down until I finished the last page at 1 o’clock on a Sunday morning.
This unique thriller explores what happens when you don’t become the mother you expected to be and struggle to connect with your child. It is all at once brilliant, nuanced, and propulsive.
Audrain lays bare the complexities of the nature of maternal love, generational trauma, and skirting the fine line between sanity and madness.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | A New York Times bestseller!
"Utterly addictive." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
"Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end."-Good Morning America
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family-and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for-and everything she feared
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
I’m a backpacker at heart, a high school English teacher, and a bestselling author with an eye on what’s really happening under the surface and what people are really thinking. My mum taught me early to "watch the quiet ones," and I’ve always been fascinated by the way people can promote a very public self while maintaining something totally different on the inside. Perhaps that’s why I love a good twist! I also think that in the current climate of extremely savvy thriller readers, it’s impressive to wrongfoot readers and stay true to the clues hidden in the pages.
Magpie is tense, clever, and so beautifully written that I thought I was following a certain point of view, only to be whiplashed into the reveal of someone completely different.
With a story that centres around motherhood and pregnancy, the dread is a slow, subtle, terrible creep, and I loved how the characters unraveled.
For fans of The Last Mrs. Parrish comes a twisty psychological suspense about motherhood, obsession, and just how far some will go for the perfect family. “Great, plain and simple” (Stanley Tucci).
Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple. And Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate—and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for the baby of their dreams.
Except—no one is truly perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly-familiar with Jake. But Marisa doesn’t let it concern her, knowing…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I came to writing later in life – at age forty-two. Writing was something I had always wanted to do. Still, it wasn’t until I experienced something that was in some ways extraordinary and in some ways prevalent–the inadequate treatment of maternal mental health and maternal health in general–that I felt my story had to be told. While maternal mental illnesses are expected, there is a shortage of books on the topic. When I was deep inside my illness, I searched for any story that might mirror my own and had difficulty finding one. With this list, I hope to help anyone who needs a hand to reach out to.
Laura Lee Dockrill’s memoir is an honest, warm, and, at times, hilarious account of her battle with postpartum psychosis.
Dockrill is based in London, where maternal and mental healthcare is more accessible and comprehensive than in the States, so it’s refreshing to read a narrative in which the author is actually able to get the support she needs.
Dockrill sensitively breaks down the stigma of suffering from a maternal mental illness and the importance of reaching out for help when you need it.
This book left me with a powerful sense of hope for the future of maternal and mental healthcare.
'Such a raw, honest and important book' Giovanna Fletcher
Like any new mum, Laura Dockrill felt rather overwhelmed after the birth of her son. But a slow recovery, sleep deprivation and anxiety quickly escalated into postpartum psychosis, and she had to spend a fortnight in a psych ward, separated from her family. It was only when Laura began to put her ordeal into words that she began to find herself again, and recovery seemed within reach.
This is Laura's raw, honest and life-affirming story of how she made it through one of the most frightening experiences a mother can face.…
I was educated in the so-called ‘university of life’, before eventually going to a few proper universities, and returning to live in my old hometown in Essex—after spending far too long making loud music and a nuisance of myself in South London. My literary references are eclectic, but I thought I would focus my book recommendations on the anti-hero who comes from the world of French and American dirty realism. It should alert the reader to the kind of novels I write, although they're highly structured crime thrillers, with a heavy dose of very dry, sardonic sense of humor. Finally, the sequel to my latest novel should be ready for publication in 2023.
When I read Junky, I could hear the soundtrack of Low Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side, followed by the extended guitar solo on the live version of Heroin. This is Burroughs using a straightforward narrative before he decided to cut up everything and destroy the notion that there was any purpose to a beginning, middle, and end (see Naked Lunch and beyond!). Junkypulses with the desperation of an addict’s life in post-war New York and drifting down south to places like New Orleans and Mexico City. It’s a unique insight into a drug-infested lifestyle, before drugs became a fashionable accessory. It has authenticity dripping through it and is a testament to Burroughs own addiction, which at one point caused his father to collect him and move him back to live with his parents (just like Lou Reed did before he went on to ‘make…
'Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.' Thus, one of the creative visionaries of the Beat movement recites the junk equation, the calculus by which heroin redefines the addict's world. Burroughs's quasi-autobiographical narrative makes for a raw, fragmented and disturbing account of hallucinations, ghostly nocturnal wanderings, strange sexual encounters and quests to ease the hunger of the needle. Read in the incantional tones of Burroughs himself, this legendary account is as shocking and powerful as it has ever been.
I took my first hit of marijuana when I was 9. I had my first drink at 12 and my first shot of heroin at 14. My brother and sister were also alcoholics and ended up taking their own lives. I abused drugs and alcohol for over 30 years, and after many failed attempts to turn my life around, I now have 15 years of continuous sobriety. I’ve also read almost ninety books on the topic of substance abuse and have written several myself about my personal struggles to get clean and sober and stay that way. Addiction, sadly, is a subject I know all too well.
This book also deals with addiction science, and Hanson is a gifted writer who’s able to express complex ideas in simple, straightforward language. And he also devotes a good deal of time to the care and healing aspects of substance abuse. It takes one to know one, as the saying goes, and Mr. Hanson knows from personal experience and extensive investigative research what it’s like to struggle with addiction. Underrated and underread, this book is right up there with the best on the subjects of addiction and recovery.
Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually…
I took my first hit of marijuana when I was 9. I had my first drink at 12 and my first shot of heroin at 14. My brother and sister were also alcoholics and ended up taking their own lives. I abused drugs and alcohol for over 30 years, and after many failed attempts to turn my life around, I now have 15 years of continuous sobriety. I’ve also read almost ninety books on the topic of substance abuse and have written several myself about my personal struggles to get clean and sober and stay that way. Addiction, sadly, is a subject I know all too well.
Using short stories, essays, and memoir selections from such authors as Poe, Tolstoy, Dorthey Parker, and Cheever, this book is an anthology of literature on addiction. Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat,” captures the madness that comes of alcoholism. Tolstoy’s essay offers sage advice about the nature of addiction. A lesser-known but standout story by Donna Steiner, “Sleeping with Alcohol,” teaches us what it’s like to be in love with an alcoholic and watching that person self-destruct. I’m a professor of English, and I used this book in a class I taught called “The Literature of Addiction,” alongside Dirk Hanson’s The Chemical Carousel as a primer for better understanding addiction before launching into stories, essays, and memoirs about it. The short stories in Under the Influence: The Literature of Addiction are entertaining as well as enlightening, and its other selections are just as informative as the books I previously mentioned.
Drawing on two centuries of important literary and historical writings, Rebecca Shannonhouse has shaped a remarkable collection of works that are, in turn, tragic, compelling, hilarious, and enlightening. Together, these selections comprise a profound and truthful portrait of the life experience known as addiction.
Under the Influence offers classic selections from fiction, memoirs, and essays by authors such as Tolstoy, Cheever, Parker, and Poe. Also included are topical gems by writers who illuminate the causes, dangers, pleasures, and public perceptions surrounding people consumed by excessive use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Recent provocative works by Abraham Verghese, the Barthelme brothers,…
Having written in the genre of psychological/crime thriller fiction for some years, I am always drawn to original voices, particularly those who are prepared to go that extra mile to produce something fresh or a concept that hasn’t been touched on before. With this kind of writing, it is quite easy to get pigeonholed, and the author has to be as meticulously authentic as they possibly can. Thinking and then using the absurd in writing is probably the best endorsement for any book; the stranger, the better. In this modern, media-fueled world, you always have to go to different places and ignite new ideas and narratives.
This book is a very human story of teenage vulnerability and social instability.
Tense and gritty, this book doesn’t disappoint. Honest in its portrayal of drug misuse and abuse it perhaps isn’t for the faint-hearted. Ideal for those who seek to understand the underbelly of society. Written in a no-nonsense style, this is a novel that naturally flows.
Hard to put down, I read this book in a day. Well written, this is a story where you quickly immerse yourself in the characters who are so unnervingly real.
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What is this book about?
It was a love story. Me, Gemma and junk. I thought it was going to last forever.
Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn't want to be tied down. She wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, finally, you have to come down. Melvin Burgess' most ambitious and complex novel is a vivid depiction of a group of teenagers in the grip of addiction. Told from multiple viewpoints, Junk is a powerful, unflinching novel about heroin. Once you take a hit, you will never be the same again.
Katherine Ketcham is the coauthor of 17 books about alcoholism/addiction, recovery, spirituality, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and empathy. She is also the author of the memoir, The Only Life I Could Save. She recently updated and revised her first book, Under the Influence: A Life-Saving Guide to the Myths & Realities of Alcoholism, for a 40th anniversary edition (published in September 2021 by Penguin Random House). A dedicated photographer, columnist, and storyteller, she isn't sure what her 70s have in store for her but she's saving 12 hours of every day for her husband, three children, two grandchildren, extended family, and friends. Books, walks, golf, yoga, gardening, story-collecting, daydreaming, and a good night's sleep should fill up the rest.
“If only.” Sheff‘s book about his meth-addicted son dives deep into the “if only” agonies of parents who question their every action, wondering what they could have done differently, or said (or not said) in a different way to help their children avoid the horrors of drug addiction. I asked the same questions in my book, The Only Life I Could Save, and I came to the same terrifying conclusion: We cannot make the choice of life or death for our children.
My favorite lines: “I am in a silent war against an enemy as pernicious and omnipresent as Evil . . . only Satan himself could have designed a disease that has self-deception as a symptom, so that its victims deny they are afflicted, and will not seek treatment, and will vilify those on the outside who see what’s happening.”
THE NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NOW A MAJOR FILM, STARRING STEVE CARELL AND BAFTA AND GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATED TIMOTHEE CHALAMET
'What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong?'
Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff's journey through his son Nic's addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery.
Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole,…
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast…
I used my first chemicals at age nine. Why? To change the way I felt about myself and my life. It was the beginning of using externals to fix an internal problem.
A 74-year old Native American found me at ten months in recovery. He showed me a path to follow, including opening a house of healing for other women. His teachings, spiritual principles, and a lot of work helped me achieve 32 years in recovery.
Journalist Jenny Valentish knows treatment, AA, and the pathways to addiction and recovery. It’s brutally honest, and her story reads like so many others – some who didn’t make it to recovery. She further educates the reader with research and a better understanding of the psychology and physiology that drive female addiction with humor and exceptional insight.
Journalist Jenny Valentish takes a gendered look at drugs and alcohol, using her own story to light the way. Mining the expertise of 35 leading researchers, clinicians and psychiatrists, she explores the early predictors of addictive behaviour, such as trauma, temperament and impulsivity.
Drawing on neuroscience, she explains why other self-destructive behaviours - such as eating disorders, compulsive buying and high-risk sex - are interchangeable with problematic substance use. From her childhood in suburban Slough to her chaotic formative years in the London music scene, we follow her journey to Australia, where she experiences firsthand treatment facilities and AA groups,…
