Love Dance Me to the End? Readers share 100 books like Dance Me to the End...

By Alison Acheson,

Here are 100 books that Dance Me to the End fans have personally recommended if you like Dance Me to the End. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of King’s Envoy

Walter Rhein Author Of The Reader of Acheron

From my list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.

Walter's book list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors

Walter Rhein Why did Walter love this book?

Cas Peace is an extremely talented author. Her Artesans of Albia series is a well-realized work of fantasy and magic. Her world-building is exceptional, and the whole series has a tremendous sense of history. This is a series that you can truly sink your teeth into.

By Cas Peace,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked King’s Envoy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Taran Elijah's quest for knowledge uncovers a plot that threatens the world...In Albia, the fourth realm, the precious Artesan gift is dying. Although born to the craft, Taran is struggling to achieve his potential. Against his friends' advice, he embarks on a foolhardy plan to acquire the teaching he craves. Alone, he crosses into Andaryon, the fifth realm, but instead of finding a mentor, he stumbles upon a treacherous plot.In the wake of Taran's actions, Albia suffers a series of vicious raids. Major Sullyan of the High King's forces is sent to oppose them. But a dark and treacherous force…


Book cover of Veil of the Dragon

Walter Rhein Author Of The Reader of Acheron

From my list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.

Walter's book list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors

Walter Rhein Why did Walter love this book?

Barczak’s work belongs to that realm of poetic fiction that is occupied by Robert E. Howard and Janet Morris. Veil of the Dragon plays out like a vivid nightmare. This is the kind of fantasy novel that makes you want to pause in the middle of the paragraph you’re reading, go back to the beginning, and read out loud just to see how the words sound. Poetic fantasy takes you to another level.

By Tom Barczak,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Veil of the Dragon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius is raised from the dead by the hand of a child. His kingdom stolen by the evil dragon, Gorond, Chaelus’ only hope to reclaim his throne rests with the child knight who saved him, the heretical order to which the child belongs, and the truth about Chaelus which they alone protect.


Book cover of Blood of a Fallen God

Walter Rhein Author Of The Reader of Acheron

From my list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.

Walter's book list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors

Walter Rhein Why did Walter love this book?

This is the first book in the Forgemaster Cycle. The audiobook features a fantastic vocal performance. Again, this is a well-realized fantasy world with a palpable history. You follow the adventures of a young blacksmith who aspires to perfect his craft in service of the fallen god of the forge. It’s an exciting adventure with high stakes and believable characters.

By Joshua C. Cook,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Blood of a Fallen God as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Blood of a Fallen God is the award winning start of an incredible epic fantasy series that has readers hooked.

The Reach has been a major mining town for as long as anyone in Alos can remember. Once, it was a grand and powerful city. But when the god of craft and creation fell, so too did the Reach. Now the Reach is surrounded by the Mistlands, dangerous territory populated by corrupted humans who live for blood.

The Reis family has always lived in the Reach. And Duncan Reis is happy to stay there, searching ruins for artifacts and jewelry…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

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.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of North of Highway Eight

Walter Rhein Author Of The Reader of Acheron

From my list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.

Walter's book list on from criminally oppressed and exploited authors

Walter Rhein Why did Walter love this book?

Dan Woll is an exceptional author who writes about outdoor life in Northern Wisconsin. He’s an avid runner, cyclist, and climber. This collection features an account of the Barneveld tornado that blew through Wisconsin back in 1984. Woll’s work is filled with both humor and wisdom. This is a great book for anyone with a passion for the outdoors.

By Dan Woll,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked North of Highway Eight as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dan Woll, co-author of Death on Cache Lake is back with more tales of adventure in the Northwoods. This time, they’re true! You will love this book if you’ve ever paddled a canoe on a wild river, climbed a mountain, cycled lonely country roads, or sat by a roaring campfire while a solitary loon cries on a moonlit lake.


Book cover of The Story of My Tits

Laura Catherine Brown Author Of Made by Mary

From my list on smart, sarcastic, funny-sad-angry women.

Why am I passionate about this?

My favorite books are funny/sad. In my own writing, I aspire for balance between satire and sympathy, going to dark places and shining a light of hilarity on them. I’m compelled by the psychological complexities of desire, particularly in female characters—flawed, average women, struggling for empowerment. For me, desire is inextricably bound with loss. I’m inspired by loss both superficial and profound, from misplaced keys to dying fathers. Many voices clamor in my head, vying for my attention. I’m interested in ambitious misfits, enraged neurotics, pagans, shamans, healers, dealers, grifters, and spiritual seekers who are forced to adapt, construct, reinvent and contort themselves as reality shifts around them.

Laura's book list on smart, sarcastic, funny-sad-angry women

Laura Catherine Brown Why did Laura love this book?

I started this book because I liked the drawing style. Within the first 3 pages, I couldn’t put the book down. It’s not just Jennifer Hayden’s illustration skills or the freshness of her lines and patterns and mark-making and the way each panel is a masterpiece in itself, it’s the story that pulled me in. This is a book about life and love and family, told with humor, insight, and intelligence. In Jennifer Hayden’s words, the book is “a dramatic comedy sewn together from real events and real emotions,” but that doesn’t begin to convey the richness and depth of this narrative journey and the quirky sarcastic honest way it tells it like it is. The story still resonates long after I finished reading it.

By Jennifer Hayden,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Story of My Tits as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Jennifer Hayden was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 43, she realized that her tits told a story. Across a lifetime, they'd held so many meanings: hope and fear, pride and embarrassment, life and death. And then they were gone. Now, their story has become a way of understanding her story. Growing up flat-chested and highly aware of her inadequacies... heading off to college, where she "bloomed" in more ways than one... navigating adulthood between her mother's mastectomy, her father's mistress, and her musician boyfriend's problems of his ownnot to mention his sprawling family. Then the kids…


Book cover of Body Toxic

Stacy Alaimo Author Of Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self

From my list on thinking of ourselves as the environment.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been passionate about animals, the environment, and social justice since I was a child. As an adult I have been frustrated—even enragedthat so many products and practices are considered safe and “normal” even though they harm wildlife, pets, and people. I think it's bizarre that people imagine themselves as separate from the chemicals they spray in their homes and their yards, even as they breathe in the toxins. I hope that the concept of “transcorporeality,” which urges us to see our own bodies as literally part of the environment, will convince people that environmentalism isn’t optional but is a vital part of human health and social justice.

Stacy's book list on thinking of ourselves as the environment

Stacy Alaimo Why did Stacy love this book?

Suzanne Antonetta’s Body Toxic epitomizes what I call the “material memoir,” a mode of writing autobiography that seeks to understand the self through connections to places and substances. Antonetta bravely examines her own physical and mental health, grappling with scientific data: “I choked facts and they choked me back, they stuck like Legos—clingy but hard to build into anything real.” Recalling the nuclear warhead that caught fire nearby her childhood home, spraying radioactive particles, she notes that her entire family, bizarrely, has somehow forgotten this incident. Body Toxic is fascinating, chilling, and unnerving, but also beautifully written in unflinching yet poetic prose. Body Toxic convinced me that our life stories are incomplete if they ignore how places and substances have affected us.

By Susanne Antonetta,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Body Toxic as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A thought-provoking and dramatic account two families who hope to start a new life in the boglands of New Jersey only to discover, much too late, that their new living environment was riddled with radiation and toxic waste.

Two immigrant families drawn together from wildly different parts of the world, Italy on one side and Barbados on the other, pursued their vision of the American dream by building a summer escape in the boglands of New Jersey, where the rural and industrial collide. They picked gooseberries on hot afternoons and spent lazy days rowing dinghies down creeks. But the gooseberry…


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Book cover of Up the Down Escalator: Medicine, Motherhood, and Multiple Sclerosis

Up the Down Escalator by Lisa Doggett,

2024 Gold Winner, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Health & Fitness Category

2024 International Book Awards, Winner, Autobiography/Memoir Category and Health: Women's Health Category

A memoir of triumph in the face of a terrifying diagnosis, Up the Down Escalator recounts Dr. Lisa Doggett's startling shift from doctor to patient, as she learns…

Book cover of Sick: A Memoir

Rebecca Dimyan Author Of Chronic: A Memoir

From my list on chronic illness to laugh, cry, and everything in between.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a woman who suffers from chronic illness, I am interested in sharing my experience and learning about other women who also suffer and survive their chronic conditions. I have had endometriosis, a painful disease, since I was a teenager. I’ve always enjoyed stories about different kinds of chronic illnesses, and I appreciate the way pain and sickness can be translated into memorable books. 

Rebecca's book list on chronic illness to laugh, cry, and everything in between

Rebecca Dimyan Why did Rebecca love this book?

Although I may be biased in recommending my former mentor’s book, this memoir about Khakpour’s experience with mysterious illnesses and addictions is a must read.

Written in sharp, often poetic prose, the author offers an intimate portrait of a chronically ill woman of color navigating the frustrating world of doctors, tests, theories, medications, and doubt. The reader is pulled into this dark, gritty story of benzodiazepine abuse, debilitating symptoms, economic hardship, and, ultimately, diagnosis.

I love every book ever written by Khakpour, however, Sick is my absolute favorite (so far!) Not only could I relate to her experience in many ways, I adore her willingness to share all the messy, difficult pieces of her life.

By Porochista Khakpour,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Reivew, and LitHub.

Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 • Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018  •  Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books  • GQ Best Non Fiction Book of 2018  • Bustle’s 28 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2018 list  •  Nylon’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018  • Electric Literature’s 46 Books to Read By Women of Color in 2018 

“Porochista Khakpour’s powerful memoir, Sick, reads like a mystery and a reckoning with a love…


Book cover of Not So Different: What You Really Want to Ask About Having a Disability

Tylia L. Flores Author Of As seen through the eyes of a disabled woman Cerebral Palsy: A Beauty to be discovered

From my list on overcoming challenges and obstacles of cerebral palsy.

Why am I passionate about this?

In the years since I was 15, I have been writing and publishing books. After graduating from Florida Virtual School in 2014, I am currently pursuing a liberal arts degree with a focus on disabilities education. I'm passionate about literature, and I've dedicated myself to educating others about disabilities through my love of literature. Furthermore, I own a radio station and produce several podcasts related to disability. I contribute to seven different sites, including the mighty thought catalog and unwritten, where I talk about my life as a 27-year-old with a disability. I am also an advocate for disability rights, as well as a writer and author for disability issues.

Tylia's book list on overcoming challenges and obstacles of cerebral palsy

Tylia L. Flores Why did Tylia love this book?

A humorous take on what it's like to be a disabled adult. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It discusses how to interact with someone with a disability and dives deep into diversity and how to communicate effectively with adults. Having read this book has made my journey with cerebral palsy much easier and I would definitely say that it has made me look at life in more humorous ways.

By Shane Burcaw, Matt Carr (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Not So Different as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Not So Different offers a humorous, relatable, and refreshingly honest glimpse into Shane Burcaw’s life. Shane tackles many of the mundane and quirky questions that he’s often asked about living with a disability, and shows readers that he’s just as approachable, friendly, and funny as anyone else.

Shane Burcaw was born with a rare disease called spinal muscular atrophy, which hinders his muscles’ growth. As a result, his body hasn’t grown bigger and stronger as he’s gotten older—it’s gotten smaller and weaker instead. This hasn’t stopped him from doing the things he enjoys (like eating pizza and playing sports and…


Book cover of In the Land of Pain

Kieran Setiya Author Of Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

From my list on finding solidarity in suffering.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I work on ethics and related questions about human agency and human knowledge. My interest in adversity is both personal and philosophical: it comes from my own experience with chronic pain and from a desire to revive the tradition of moral philosophy as a medium of self-help. My last book was Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, and I have also written about baseball and philosophy, stand-up comedy, and the American author H. P. Lovecraft.

Kieran's book list on finding solidarity in suffering

Kieran Setiya Why did Kieran love this book?

Alphonse Daudet’s notebooks on pain are among the most explicit, honest, and consoling treatments of chronic illness ever written. Daudet was a contemporary of Flaubert, admired as a novelist of provincial France by such luminaries as Charles Dickens and Henry James. Like Flaubert, Daudet suffered from syphilis and he planned to write a book about his experience. He died before he could do that, but his notebooks survive. As someone who lives with chronic pain, I cherish Daudet’s frank but never saccharine advice and his commitment to compassion for others in the teeth of his own suffering.

By Alphonse Daudet, Julian Barnes (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In the Land of Pain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A “startling [and] splendid” book (The New York Times Book Review) from one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century on his years of enduring severe illness—a classic in the literary annals of human suffering. • Edited and translated by the bestselling, Booker Prize winning author of The Sense of an Ending.

“Pain, you must be everything for me. Let me find in you all those foreign lands you will not let me visit.” —Alphonse Daudet

Daudet (1840–1897) was a greatly admired writer during his lifetime, praised by Dickens and Henry James. In the prime of his life, he…


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Book cover of Fourteen

Fourteen by Leslie Johansen Nack,

Fourteen is a coming-of-age adventure when, at the age of 14, Leslie and her two sisters have to batten down the hatches on their 45-foot sailboat to navigate the Pacific Ocean and French Polynesia, as well as the stormy temper of their larger-than-life Norwegian father.

Book cover of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

Lisa Currie Author Of Guidebook to the Unknown: A Journal for Anxious Minds

From my list on journeying into the unknown.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an Australian author and artist who is quite cautious and introverted by nature, but very curious and playful at heart. I make books that help people untangle what’s on their mind today and shift their thinking in creative ways, often using visual metaphors. My latest book, Guidebook to the Unknown, was created during the long lockdowns we had in Melbourne (and all over the world of course) during the pandemic. It was my way of exploring how to calm an anxious mind and find meaning in my daily life, right here and now, without knowing what tomorrow will bring.

Lisa's book list on journeying into the unknown

Lisa Currie Why did Lisa love this book?

This fascinating and charming book was written by a French magazine editor after he suffered a massive stroke and was locked inside his own body, unable to speak or move. Incredibly, he wrote this book in his mind throughout the day and then each letter was slowly transcribed by blinking his eyes. I kept thinking about this book long after I read it. It’s a nightmare scenario, but he leads us all the way through it. We’re with him as he survives and even finds meaning when almost everything else is lost.

By Jean-Dominique Bauby, Jeremy Leggatt (translator),

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Whilst suffering from a condition whereby he was unable to speak and his only movement was the blinking of an eyelid, Jean-Dominique Bauby devised a code for each letter of the alphabet and dictated this book about his experiences and feelings. He died just after it was published.


Book cover of King’s Envoy
Book cover of Veil of the Dragon
Book cover of Blood of a Fallen God

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