Here are 83 books that I Liked My Life fans have personally recommended if you like
I Liked My Life.
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As someone who has experienced a lot of loss in my life, I’ve done a good amount of research and exploration into the soulful nature in all of us (the living and the dead) through reading nonfiction (Laura Lynn Jackson, Brian Weiss, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, John Edward and Suzane Northrop among them) and fiction that deals with strong soulful connections. Through my own work as an author, I seek to provide the message love, in any form, transcends life and death. We only have to be open to the possibility to know it and experience it. Nothing is a coincidence and we are all connected. I hope these selections open you to the possibility.
Mitch Albom creates a heavenly world for the main character, Eddie, who has just ascended from earth after saving someone at the carnival where he worked; thus, meeting his own tragic demise.
What strikes me most in this story are the seemingly irrelevant connections we make in life and how those connections could have a deep and lasting impact. Every single thing we do or say or the people we touch is purposeful here, and drives us, our souls, to seek grace in all that we do.
A STUNNING 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE MASTER STORYTELLER'S INSPIRATIONAL CLASSIC
To his mind, Eddie has lived an uninspiring life. Now an old man, his job is to fix rides at a seaside amusement park.
On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie's time on earth comes to an end. When a cart falls from the fairground, he rushes to save a little girl's life and tragically dies in the attempt. When Eddie awakens, he learns that the afterlife is not a destination, but a place where your existence is explained to you by five people - some of whom you knew, others…
As someone who has experienced a lot of loss in my life, I’ve done a good amount of research and exploration into the soulful nature in all of us (the living and the dead) through reading nonfiction (Laura Lynn Jackson, Brian Weiss, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, John Edward and Suzane Northrop among them) and fiction that deals with strong soulful connections. Through my own work as an author, I seek to provide the message love, in any form, transcends life and death. We only have to be open to the possibility to know it and experience it. Nothing is a coincidence and we are all connected. I hope these selections open you to the possibility.
This book, written by psychic medium Laura Lynn Jackson, was gifted to me shortly after the unexpected passing of my sister.
The book validated for me what I already believed: everything happens in the time it’s meant to and everything (and everyone) is connected. Jackson reports story after story about how souls in the afterlife remain connected to their loved ones on earth.
And, for those who are open to the possibility, signs (and messages) are provided when most needed.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned psychic medium teaches us how to recognize and interpret the life-changing messages from loved ones and spirit guides on the Other Side.
“A collection of incredible stories . . . that speak to the universe’s endless capacity for magical moments.”—Goop
Laura Lynne Jackson is a psychic medium and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Light Between Us. She possesses an incredible gift: the ability to communicate with loved ones who have passed, convey messages of love and healing, and impart a greater understanding of our interconnectedness. Though her abilities are…
As someone who has experienced a lot of loss in my life, I’ve done a good amount of research and exploration into the soulful nature in all of us (the living and the dead) through reading nonfiction (Laura Lynn Jackson, Brian Weiss, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, John Edward and Suzane Northrop among them) and fiction that deals with strong soulful connections. Through my own work as an author, I seek to provide the message love, in any form, transcends life and death. We only have to be open to the possibility to know it and experience it. Nothing is a coincidence and we are all connected. I hope these selections open you to the possibility.
When Chris, the main character of this novel, dies, he teeters between a majestic heaven and the depths of hell when he can’t let go of his life because of his wife’s descent into depression.
This is a love story about a spirit that cannot move on because his soul is so deeply connected to his wife in the human world even though the peace heaven offers is tempting. This is the first novel opened my mind to the connections between souls on earth and those in the afterlife.
What happens to us after we die? Chris Nielsen had no idea, until an unexpected accident cut his life short, separating him abruptly from his beloved wife. Now Chris must discover the true nature of life after death. He also has to risk his very soul to save Annie from an eternity of despair.
In the 1980s, my mother “divorced” her mother with a letter in the mail. In 2010 I did the same via email. I thought it was just my dysfunctional family, but come to find out, mother-adult daughter estrangement is not unusual and difficult mother-daughter relationships don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in the context of patriarchy, white supremacy, internalized misogyny, and other oppressive systems. Through therapy and, later, when I trained to be a life coach, allllll my “mother stuff” came up. The tools and practices I learned and developed were so helpful to me, I couldn’t keep them to myself.
Wells’ novel takes readers to the heart of the pain that an adult daughter experiences at the hands of a troubled mother.
It explores how the pain and trauma of being a woman in a culture that doesn’t value women equally are passed down through generations and how each generation picks it up and carries it, in similar but different ways.
This “wound” shows up in the relationships of mothers who grew up in the 1950s and 60s and their daughters who grew up in the 1970s and 80s. The mothers want so much for their daughters to have more freedom than they themselves did, but instead find themselves experiencing fear, bitterness, and unexpected jealousy.
Film tie-in edition of the international bestseller. When Siddalee Walker, eldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker (Ya-Ya extraordinaire - part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah) is interviewed about a hit play she has directed, her mother is described as a 'tap-dancing child abuser'.
Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda - devastating her daughter who postpones her wedding and puts her life on hold until she is granted forgiveness. Trying to repair the relationship, the Ya-Yas, Vivi's intrepid tribe of Louisiana girlfriends, sashay in and insist Sidda is sent 'The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood', a scrapbook of their lives together…
I grew up in a house filled with books as a son of educated, well-read parents. My mother was an English/French/Spanish teacher, and my father was an encyclopedia editor. Among all the books in our downstairs, there was a custom-built coffin bookcase my father kept stocked with his favorite horror novels. He died when I was eleven and in an effort to get to know him better, I started reading the books in that coffin. I was very quickly turned into a horror fan, and a few years later started writing horror stories myself. Every time I start writing another horror story, I know I’m my father’s son.
Straub is a master, but this title is often overlooked. It’s compact, completely engaging, and features some of the best dread-inducing moments I’ve ever read in a horror novel. His writing is a masterclass in dread, and as a writer I return to it often. Much as Tremblay uses the gimmick of reality TV in A Head Full of Ghosts to horrifying effect, Straub employs email in a creepy and sinister fashion.
A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son—beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill—vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death. After his sister-in-law’s funeral, Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No…
I'm a huge bookworm and have enjoyed writing stories of my own since my elementary school days. During junior high, high school, and college, along with a lot of literature courses, I enrolled in every creative writing class I could find. I loved the stories, poems, and novels dealing with hard subjects the most, which (of course) resulted in me writing my own piles of gritty short stories. Those short stories continue to inspire my writing today. No surprise that the novel I’m currently working on is also based on a dark, gritty story I wrote my freshman year of college. Wish me luck on getting this one published, too!
In A Ring of Endless Light, sixteen-year-old Vicky Austin has to come to terms with death from all directions, starting with the funeral service of Commander Rodney presided over by her grandfather, who is dying of cancer. Watching her grandfather deteriorate over the summer on Seven Bay Island is hard as it is, but it’s complicated even more when Vicky has to juggle the romantic interest of three very different guys: Leo, an old friend and Commander Rodney’s son; Zachary, whose attempted suicide caused Commander Rodney’s death; and Adam, her older brother’s friend, who offers her an amazing chance to work with dolphins, something that gives her a break from the constant hard in her life.
I love this emotionally heavy novel, largely due to Madeleine L’Engle’s beautiful, descriptive writing. A Ring of Endless Light finds beauty in struggle and sorrow, and even in death. Ms. L’Engle’s novels always…
In book four of the award-winning Austin Family Chronicles young adult series from Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, Vicky Austin experiences the difficulties and joys of growing up.
"This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved."
These are Vicky Austin's thoughts as she stands near Commander Rodney's grave while her grandfather, who himself is dying of cancer, recites the funeral service. Watching his condition deteriorate over that long summer is almost…
I have always loved fantasy worlds and romantic stories, but in recent years I’ve found it harder to read stories with extreme violence or trauma. When I started writing fiction, I planned to write a fantasy romance with a kingdom and a battle, but I couldn’t do it—my characters organized a nonviolent revolution and formed a democratic system of governance instead. I reconsidered and decided to write what I call cozy fantasy romances. So many types of romance novels could be set in a fantasy world, such as an office romance or road trip comedy. I’ve been searching for these types of romance novels—fun, lighthearted romances set in a fantasy world—and am slowly finding them.
This book made me laugh out loud so many times—it's the funniest fantasy I have ever read. An oddball crew breaks into the protagonist’s prison cell to rescue a prince, so the protagonist claims to be the prince and is rescued along with his cellmate.
The journey back to the prince’s country is a road trip comedy with a wacky cast... but amid all the crude jokes are real emotional moments and characters being kind to each other. The protagonist can’t stop himself from falling for the prince and grows as a person in the process. Nothing about the story ever gets too serious, and the bad bits happen quickly and without prolonged trauma. I loved everything about it.
I’ve been fascinated by spy stories since childhood, never sure which character is a friend or foe within the stories. As I grew older, I became interested in fictional mysteries, including those with settings in the Medieval era, turn-of-the-century England, and World War II. Unsure of who to trust is a theme through my Detective Henry Ike Pierce series, of which I'm working on the third book now. False hearts abound in my stories, and Detective Pierce must sort through a seemingly flexible definition of trust, including uncertainty of his closest colleagues’ loyalty. If you're a fan of seeking the truth, I hope these books are as enjoyable to you as they were to me.
Detective Tom Shawn interrupts a young woman’s suicide attempt. She professes to know a man that predicts the future, including her father's death. The clairvoyant man predicts his own death, but Detective Shawn suspects foul play.
I enjoyed this story. I could not figure out until the end whether most of the events were within the woman’s runaway imagination, a series of happenstances, or whether the clairvoyant man was the killer. The author slowly peels back a few layers as the story progresses, but there always seems to be more, leading to a surprise ending.
NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES is Woolrich's longest and most ambitious novel. The noir classic follows Detective Tom Shawn on his nightly walk along the river which is interrupted when he follows a trial of money on the ground leading to a woman attempting suicide. After saving her life, he is drawn into her story. She tells him of a clairvoyant man that has recently predicted many strange and extreme events with stunning accuracy, and has now ensured the death of her father, with whom she is incredibly close. The man predicts that he will die in the coming days…
I’ve loved cinema since I was 9 years old growing up in New York City and my grandmother took me to see The Ten Commandments at the Paradise Theater, Loew’s magnificent flagship theater in the Bronx. The theater’s famous canopy of twinkling stars on the ceiling was the perfect magical venue, and I was thunderstruck not only by the epic sweep of the movie but also by the opulence of the theater, which mirrored the monumental pyramids that Ramses constructs in the film. Ever since, my passion for movies has been as all-consuming as DeMille’s jello sea was for the infidel Egyptians who doubted the power of special effects and cinematic illusion.
John Barth’s first novel, originally published in 1956 and later significantly revised, is a darkly comic philosophical novel whose main character, Todd Andrews, is contemplating suicide.
The novel, along with Barth’s second, The End of the Road, is written in a relatively realistic style, different from the metafictional turn that the author would later take in his subsequent fiction.Nevertheless, these two early books are in some ways consistent with later works like Giles Boat Boy and Lost in the Funhouse, particularly in the passages about metaphor in life and art.
Barth’s musings about metaphors in the real world are relevant to Wiseman’s ability to wrest metaphoric implications from real-world events and objects. Indeed, Wiseman’s films are a veritable floating opera of signifiers.
The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. Together they illustrate the beginnings of an illustrious career.
Since an early age, I loved getting lost in a good story and knew I wanted to be a writer one day. As an adult, I tried writing in many genres but it was when I had my children that I knew I wanted to write children’s bedtime stories. I loved that special time at the end of a busy day when I could snuggle down with my children and get lost in a story with them. I now write children's bedtime stories for a podcast called Koko Sleep. The stories are written in a soothing way and are designed to help the listeners drift easily to sleep.
My eldest daughter is called Rosie and she absolutely adored this book. It has lift-the-flaps inside which children always love. It's a simple story about a rabbit getting ready for bedtime, and it gently encourages children to have a bedtime routine. I read it every night and it wasn't long before my daughter knew the words and she started reading it to me. It is such a treasured book and I still have it in my family box of memories.
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