Fans pick 100 books like Domina

By Barbara Wood,

Here are 100 books that Domina fans have personally recommended if you like Domina. 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 The Girl in His Shadow

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why did Isabel love this book?

This book is so full of tension and grit that I found it hard to stop reading. One of the things this book does so well is plop me right in the middle of a plague. The darkness persists as the main character (Nora, an orphan idiosyncratically trained in medical skills like surgery and caring for patients) pokes her way through the medical field, seldom receiving credit for her abilities and skills because she’s not supposed to practice medicine. No woman is in the 1840s.

The book points inward toward Nora’s travels through unfairness where she does the work and someone else always takes the credit. Only when she faces the worth that she’s created in herself does everything around her begin to shift dangerously. This book certainly kept my attention!

By Audrey Blake,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Girl in His Shadow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
"An exquisitely detailed journey through the harrowing field of medicine in mid-19th century London."-Tracey Enerson Wood, USA Today bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife and The War Nurse
An unforgettable historical fiction novel about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her.
London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical…


Book cover of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why did Isabel love this book?

OK, OK, this book is not a novel, although it’s as easy to read as a novel with all its tension. It covers, among others, the lives of Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake, and other female doctors from the 1800s.

The deeply researched book is biographical, but its strength is in the examination of how women doctors were thought of throughout the ages and the difference they’ve made. The book explores the ancestors of modern doctors (mid wives, ancient Greeks female doctors, etc.).

I found the writing accessible and vivid with a real elbows-on-the-table and sleeves-rolled-up approach.

By Olivia Campbell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Women in White Coats as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Meet the pioneering women who changed the medical landscape for us all

For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionising the way women receive health care.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in…


Book cover of The Medicine Woman of Galveston

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why did Isabel love this book?

I really enjoyed this book because it plopped me right into the early 1900s when women began wandering into traditionally men’s fields like medicine. I like the delicate folding of the main character’s personal life with her Down Syndrome child and her struggles in her professional life because, face it, work is not everything in life.

This book captures the compromises a single mother has to make and compounds them by adding characters who refuse to believe she’s competent in medicine.

By Amanda Skenandore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Medicine Woman of Galveston as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In a uniquely vivid story of women in medicine, found family, and conquering fear for readers of Kristin Hannah, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and Audrey Blake, an impoverished former doctor and her disabled son join a traveling medicine show and its family of strangers on a collision course with the deadliest natural disaster in American history – the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. From the acclaimed author of The Nurse's Secret and The Second Life of Mirielle West.

"Perfect on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin." —Addison Armstrong, Author of The War Librarian

Once a trailblazer in…


Book cover of Out of Patients

Isabel Tutaine Author Of Song of the Wooden Sparrow

From my list on female doctors.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.

Isabel's book list on female doctors

Isabel Tutaine Why did Isabel love this book?

I like that this book is in first person because, at times, it feels as if you are in a conversation with the main character.

The book opens with a super-strong voice and is contemporary rather than historical. After I did all the research for historical novels having to do with female doctors, I felt the need to move forward in novels to see if anything had changed as far as attitudes toward women doctors were concerned.

And indeed, yes, things are better in this book, but tension and problems still require grappling. 

By Sandra Cavallo Miller,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

After practicing medicine for over thirty years, Norah Waters MD is weighing her options, and early retirement looks better and better. At age fifty-eight, who needs midnight calls, cranky patients, and business headaches? Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one last year to find her way back to enjoying her once-cherished career. In her final effort to make a meaningful difference, Norah takes on two medical students who both make and break her resolve to persist. One seems a hopeless introvert, the other a toxic egotist; supervising them makes her downright dizzy as she labels them the "yin…


Book cover of The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America's Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime

Marcia Biederman Author Of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England

From my list on abortion flourishing even when criminalized.

Why am I passionate about this?

Years ago, I wrote mystery novels featuring women investigators when that was new in the genre. Now, I discover stories of real-life women whose lives have a natural story arc that can engage the reader from start to finish. Like gambling and prostitution, abortion, when it was illegal in the US, as it is now again in many places, was simultaneously in your face and undercover. It was also largely practiced by women, which is why I’m fascinated by books about it.

Marcia's book list on abortion flourishing even when criminalized

Marcia Biederman Why did Marcia love this book?

I thought I had nothing left to learn about Madame Restell, the unapologetic 19th-century abortion provider until I saw how this book was organized. While keeping the narrative flowing, Syrett helpfully organizes Restell’s career into phases defined by changes in the law, her trials, and the emergence of one male adversary after another.

I loved learning that, even after Restell met her Waterloo, her loving grandchildren profited from her legacy. As told by Syrett, a gender-norm-defying woman who was literally hounded to death somehow managed to have the last laugh.

By Nicholas L. Syrett,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Trials of Madame Restell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The biography of one of the most famous abortionists of the nineteenth century-and a story that has unmistakable parallels to the current war on reproductive rights

For forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, "Madame Restell," the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control medication, attended women during their pregnancies, delivered their children, and performed abortions in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. It was the abortions that made her famous. "Restellism" became the term her detractors used to indict her.


Restell began practicing when abortion was…


Book cover of The Canal House

Keith B. Richburg Author Of Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa

From my list on Africa about journalists, diplomats, and spies.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a journalist since high school and I spent 33 years as a reporter for The Washington Post, mostly as a foreign correspondent based in Asia, Africa, and Paris. My book Out Of America chronicled my three years as a correspondent in Africa during some of its most tumultuous events, the Somalia intervention, and the Rwanda genocide. I’ve always thought a well-crafted novel often captures a place or a time better than nonfiction — books like The Quiet American about the Vietnam War, and The Year of Living Dangerously about Indonesia. I now teach a university course on The Role of the Journalist in Popular Fiction, Film and Comics.

Keith's book list on Africa about journalists, diplomats, and spies

Keith B. Richburg Why did Keith love this book?

Okay, this fine novel is only partially set in Africa, in Uganda, where intrepid fictional journalist Daniel McFarland treks into the jungles to find and interview the leader of a rebel group based on the Lords Resistance Army. Told from the vantage point of world-weary photographer Nicky Bettencourt, the action later shift to East Timor during the fight for independence against Indonesia. This novel comes as close as any to describe the real lives of foreign correspondents — the unnecessary risks, the loneliness of life lived constantly on the road. It’s beautifully written, a good read, and reeks of authenticity.

By Mark Lee,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Photojournalist Nicky Bettencourt thinks he's seen everything until he teams up with the legendary war correspondent Daniel McFarland. To Daniel, the story is everything; people come later. But after a plane crash nearly takes his life, Daniel begins to see the world in a different way. He falls in love with Julia Cadell, an idealistic British doctor, and together they find refuge at an old canal house in the center of London. Soon after, Nicky, Daniel, and Julia are called to East Timor, where the government has fled and the entire country is a war zone, and Daniel must decide…


Book cover of Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue

David Z. Hirsch Author Of Didn't Get Frazzled

From my list on painfully honest training to become a doctor.

Why am I passionate about this?

I think our collective fascination with medical training is understandable. What bizarre sorcery molds otherwise sensible college graduates into fully functioning physicians? Is it possible to maintain your humanity in the process? Or any semblance of a normal relationship? While my book remains the only novel about medical school training, many great physician memoirs detail the typically exhausting, frequently bizarre, and ultimately gratifying experience of becoming a doctor. After graduating from Wesleyan University, I obtained my medical degree at New York University School of Medicine and trained in the primary care internal medicine program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. I live in Maryland with my wife and two children.

David's book list on painfully honest training to become a doctor

David Z. Hirsch Why did David love this book?

Written as a series of essays focusing on her experiences with individual patients, Dr. Ofri walks us through the entirety of her training. As she grows in confidence, she learns how to heal her patients and herself.

Dr. Ofri had a life between college and medical school (unlike me), so even though she is older than I am, she started at NYU/Bellevue the year after I graduated. I enjoyed reading how patient care had progressed at Bellevue in the years following my great escape.

By Danielle Ofri,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A “finely gifted writer” shares “fifteen brilliantly written episodes covering the years from studenthood to the end of medical residency” (Oliver Sacks, MD, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat)

Singular Intimacies is the story of becoming a doctor by immersion at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country—and perhaps the most legendary. It is both the classic inner-city hospital and a unique amalgam of history, insanity, beauty, and intellect. When Danielle Ofri enters these 250-year-old doors as a tentative medical student, she is immediately plunged into the teeming world of urban medicine: mysterious…


Book cover of A Double Life

Nicole Bokat Author Of Will End in Fire

From my list on domestic suspense that upends the meaning of family.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a novelist with a PhD in Literature from NYU. My background is Modern British, and I’ve always been drawn to literary stylists. But, over the years, I’ve developed a passion for reading and writing novels that deal with themes of betrayal either within families or between close friends. I’m drawn to domestic suspense in which the characters’ psychological growth isn’t secondary to the plot.

Nicole's book list on domestic suspense that upends the meaning of family

Nicole Bokat Why did Nicole love this book?

Flynn Berry’s book is another example of this author’s ability to make me care deeply for her character while also sweeping me into a mysterious plot.

While keeping up a fast pace, the author delves into fascinating themes: how a close family member can betray you, how a sociopath can escape society and reinvent himself, and how one recovers from the trauma of a murderous past.

By Flynn Berry,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'A THRILLING PAGE-TURNER' Paula Hawkins
'SHOCKING AND SATISFYING' New York Times, Editor's Choice
'WHAT A BOOK!' Clare Mackintosh
'BEAUTIFULLY PACED AND SATISFYINGLY OMINOUS' Observer

'Confirms the promise of Berry's debut, Under the Harrow... Mesmerisingly effective' The Sunday Times | 'Shocking' Guardian | 'Berry gives the well-worn story of Lord Lucan a fresh twist with this clever tale' i (Best Beach Reads for Summer) | 'A compulsive page-turner' Daily Mail | 'A damning dissection on class and privilege. Fans of Elizabeth Day's The Party will love this' Sarra Manning, Red Online | 'Psychological suspense has a new reigning queen' New York…


Book cover of Strange Practice

Kitty Shields Author Of Pillar of Heaven

From my list on monsters at work.

Why am I passionate about this?

Fantasy of all kinds is my jam, but I particularly like stories that weave monsters or myths into real life. When an author manages to reinvent a familiar monster trope, like Vivian Shaw with Van Helsing, and spin it into a new, stylized story, that’s the best display of cleverness. I’ve read an embarrassing amount of these kinds of books from Terry Pratchett to Frank Herbert. I think the notion of monsters/creatures/gods is our way of examining the different layers of the human psyche and a well-written monster trope story delivers that self-examination with a spoon full of fantastical sugar.  

Kitty's book list on monsters at work

Kitty Shields Why did Kitty love this book?

Greta Helsing’s family dropped the ‘Van’ half a century ago. And they don’t hunt vampires so much as heal them. That’s right, Greta is a supernatural doctor. Vivian Shaw has created a world where the good guys are genuinely good, unselfish people. I love me an antihero, but it’s a refreshing change of pace when the good guys really just want to help other people without ulterior motives. Despite the fact that most of the characters aren’t human, it restores my faith in humanity. I also appreciate the historical references and subtle geekery in these books. For example, Greta is a specialist in mummy reconstruction, and the detail Shaw goes into, just tickles me.

By Vivian Shaw,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The first book in a delightfully witty fantasy series in which Dr. Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, must defend London from both supernatural ailments and a bloodthirsty cult

Greta Helsing inherited her family's highly specialized and highly peculiar medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills: vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although she barely makes ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood.

Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror…


Book cover of The Waiting Room

Jacinta Halloran Author Of Dissection

From my list on doctors that show their professional struggles.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a family physician and therapist, but I was a book-lover first. At age seventeen, I had to choose between studying medicine or literature, and I chose a profession with a clear-cut career path. But books and writing never lost their hold, and I began to write seriously in my late thirties. I’ve had four novels published, and I’m well into my fifth. Being a writer makes me a better doctor, more empathic and curious, and more engaged with patients’ narratives. Medicine is such a rich and fascinating field, and I feel privileged to write about it from an insider’s point of view.

Jacinta's book list on doctors that show their professional struggles

Jacinta Halloran Why did Jacinta love this book?

I loved this evocative and moving novel, winner of the Voss Literary Prize, for its accurate portrayal of the personal conflict that doctors often struggle with (particularly female doctors) as they try to balance the demands of work and family life.

It follows a day in the life of pregnant family physician Dr. Dina Ronen as she attends to the diverse needs of her patients and her young family while struggling to reconcile with the demanding ghosts of her personal and collective past. This is a beautifully constructed and visceral work from Australian family physician Leah Kaminsky.

By Leah Kaminsky,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

“The Waiting Room is both haunted, and haunting.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

The Waiting Room unfolds over the course of a single, life-changing day, but the story it tells spans five decades, three continents, and one family’s compelling history of love, war, and survival

As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dina’s present has always been haunted by her parents’ pasts. She becomes a doctor, emigrates, and builds a family of her own, yet no matter how hard she tries to move on, their ghosts keep pulling her back. A dark, wry sense of humor helps Dina maintain her…


Book cover of The Girl in His Shadow
Book cover of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine
Book cover of The Medicine Woman of Galveston

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Interested in female doctors, New York State, and London?

Female Doctors 29 books
New York State 565 books
London 870 books