Fans pick 93 books like Teach Resilience

By Deborah Gilboa, MD,

Here are 93 books that Teach Resilience fans have personally recommended if you like Teach Resilience. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World

Annie Fox Author Of Teaching Kids to Be Good People: Progressive Parenting for the 21st Century

From my list on helping kids become themselves.

Why am I passionate about this?

In college, I majored in Human Development and Family Studies and found my calling – to work with kids and create SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) content for them. While still an undergrad, my first book was published (People Are Like Lollipops - a picture book celebrating diversity.) Throughout my career, I’ve continued writing books and creating multimedia content for kids and teens while helping parents support their kids’ character development in the digital age. I read a lot of parenting books, but I don’t always learn something new that opens my heart and mind. Each book I’ve recommended here did that for me. I hope the books on my list will help you on your parenting journey.

Annie's book list on helping kids become themselves

Annie Fox Why did Annie love this book?

By the time our children reach middle school their choice of friends (for better or worse) becomes increasingly beyond our reach. Queen Bees and Wannabes (a non-fiction book that inspired the feature film Mean Girls), was the first to blast wide open the dark, dirty secret of girls’ relational aggression.

This book offers a deep dive into what many of our daughters have experienced or are currently in the thick of. Rosalind Wiseman, a parenting educator and NY Times best-selling author, helps parents better understand the queen bees in their kids’ lives – why these girls manipulate their peers and how we can help our daughters manage their emotions and social expectations in healthy ways so they neither fall victim to a queen bee nor put on the crown themselves and victimize others.

By Rosalind Wiseman,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

“My daughter used to be so wonderful. Now I can barely stand her and she won’t tell me anything. How can I find out what’s going on?”

“There’s a clique in my daughter’s grade that’s making her life miserable. She doesn’t want to go to school anymore. Her own supposed friends are turning on her, and she’s too afraid to do anything. What can I do?”

Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter’s adolescence. A world in which she comes to school one day to find that her friends have suddenly decided that she no longer belongs. Or she’s…


Book cover of Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism

Annie Fox Author Of Teaching Kids to Be Good People: Progressive Parenting for the 21st Century

From my list on helping kids become themselves.

Why am I passionate about this?

In college, I majored in Human Development and Family Studies and found my calling – to work with kids and create SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) content for them. While still an undergrad, my first book was published (People Are Like Lollipops - a picture book celebrating diversity.) Throughout my career, I’ve continued writing books and creating multimedia content for kids and teens while helping parents support their kids’ character development in the digital age. I read a lot of parenting books, but I don’t always learn something new that opens my heart and mind. Each book I’ve recommended here did that for me. I hope the books on my list will help you on your parenting journey.

Annie's book list on helping kids become themselves

Annie Fox Why did Annie love this book?

Like the best memoirs, this one reads like a novel in that Arthur Fleischman and his wife and children are drawn with so much honesty and detail you’ll feel as if you know them, or know people like them. Daughter Carly, however, is less knowable, because her childhood diagnosis of autism, cognitive delay, and oral motor apraxia (difficulty easily coordinating and initiating movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, and soft palate) had left her unable to communicate.

Carly’s Voice was one of the early books to explore, first-hand, the challenges of living with autism for the autistic individual as well as her family. Through the determined efforts of her parents and therapists who refused to stop helping Carly reach her full potential, Carly learns to type! That changes everything. Readers are privileged to peek inside the thoughts, feelings, and quirky sense of humor of an inspiring young woman who…

By Arthur Fleischman, Carly Fleishman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Carly's Voice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this international bestseller, father and advocate for Autism awareness Arthur Fleischmann blends his daughter Carly’s own words with his story of getting to know his remarkable daughter—after years of believing that she was unable to understand or communicate with him.

At the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted that she would never intellectually develop beyond the abilities of a small child. Carly remained largely unreachable through the years. Then, at the age of ten, she had a breakthrough.

While working with her devoted…


Book cover of The Immortality of Influence: We Can Build the Best Minds of the Next Generation

Annie Fox Author Of Teaching Kids to Be Good People: Progressive Parenting for the 21st Century

From my list on helping kids become themselves.

Why am I passionate about this?

In college, I majored in Human Development and Family Studies and found my calling – to work with kids and create SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) content for them. While still an undergrad, my first book was published (People Are Like Lollipops - a picture book celebrating diversity.) Throughout my career, I’ve continued writing books and creating multimedia content for kids and teens while helping parents support their kids’ character development in the digital age. I read a lot of parenting books, but I don’t always learn something new that opens my heart and mind. Each book I’ve recommended here did that for me. I hope the books on my list will help you on your parenting journey.

Annie's book list on helping kids become themselves

Annie Fox Why did Annie love this book?

Written by Salome Thomas-El, a parent and a nationally acclaimed educator, The Immortality of Influence nails a parent’s job description: We’re here to help kids recognize and realize their full potential. Simply put, that’s our legacy to our kids, grandkids, and any young person we take under our wing. I loved how the personal stories throughout this book demonstrated, again and again, the positive and lasting impact a consistently caring and responsible adult can have on a child’s life. Having had the honor of visiting Principal El’s school, I can attest to the fact that he walks the walk in a special way that’s immediately apparent to every child he encounters.

By Salome Thomas-El, Cecil Murphey,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Salome Thomas-EL, award-winning educator and the highly-praised author of I Choose to Stay, has helped hundreds of troubled children get into magnet high schools, major colleges, and universities. Yet he still finds himself devastated by the long-ago death of a promising student named Willow Briggs. Salome worked with and consistently encouraged this troubled boy, who ultimately became one of the school's top chess players and students. But when Willow moved on to high school, he found no real positive influences. He struggled academically and was murdered on a street corner at the age of sixteen. More than any other factor,…


Book cover of Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention

Annie Fox Author Of Teaching Kids to Be Good People: Progressive Parenting for the 21st Century

From my list on helping kids become themselves.

Why am I passionate about this?

In college, I majored in Human Development and Family Studies and found my calling – to work with kids and create SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) content for them. While still an undergrad, my first book was published (People Are Like Lollipops - a picture book celebrating diversity.) Throughout my career, I’ve continued writing books and creating multimedia content for kids and teens while helping parents support their kids’ character development in the digital age. I read a lot of parenting books, but I don’t always learn something new that opens my heart and mind. Each book I’ve recommended here did that for me. I hope the books on my list will help you on your parenting journey.

Annie's book list on helping kids become themselves

Annie Fox Why did Annie love this book?

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. When she and her pre-teen son were both diagnosed with ADHD in the same year it became her personal and professional mission to find out as much as she could about this increasingly common diagnosis. Anyone who knows and loves someone who’s been diagnosed with ADHD would do well to read this book as a guide through the often bewildering landscape of ADHD treatments. As serious and personal as Buzz is, Ellison is a great writer and her memoir is equal parts science, expert interviews and analysis, parenting angst, and humor.

By Katherine Ellison,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"An absorbing, sharply observed memoir." -- Kirkus Reviews A hilarious and heartrending account of one mother's journey to understand and reconnect with her high-spirited preteen son-a true story sure to beguile parents grappling with a child's bewildering behavior. Popular literature is filled with the stories of self-sacrificing mothers bravely tending to their challenging children. Katherine Ellison offers a different kind of tale. Shortly after Ellison, an award-winning investigative reporter, and her twelve-year-old son, Buzz, were both diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, she found herself making such a hash of parenting that the two of them faced three alternatives: he'd go…


Book cover of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories

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 was wowed by these completely compelling interconnected short stories by Canadian emergency physician Vincent Lam. Lam deftly chronicles the lives and relationships of a group of medical students as they move through their grueling studies into the sometimes terrifying world of the hospital doctor.

Wrought as if with the sharpest of scalpels, this fine collection is perfect for those who like their medical dramas, full of real characters and served with grisly detail.

By Vincent Lam,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

An astonishing literary debut centred around four students as they apply to medical school, qualify as doctors and face the realities of working in medicine, from a powerful new voice in fiction.

In this beautifully written collection, Vincent Lam weaves together black humour, investigations of both common and extraordinary moral dilemmas, and a sometimes shockingly realistic portrait of today's medical profession. We are introduced to a group of medical students over ten years, following their interlinked stories as they make the transition from medical school to hospital life.

The stories span the unique challenges faced by young, inexperienced doctors -…


Book cover of Beat the Reaper

Kellen Burden Author Of Flash Bang

From my list on brutal thrillers with heart.

Why am I passionate about this?

There's something about broken people trying to do good that has always resonated with me. In basic training, a drill sergeant with debilitating PTSD told us what combat would be like through a storm of choking sobs and a haze of tears. He needed us to know. Even if it broke him. Working as an investigator in Denver and Washington, I watched people with complicated pasts and uncertain futures fight tooth and nail (sometimes literally) to put human traffickers behind bars. Literature has always been a bridle for that wildness I saw in the world. A tool for taking the ghashing, stomping, unruliness of the human experience and making it rideable, relatable, survivable.

Kellen's book list on brutal thrillers with heart

Kellen Burden Why did Kellen love this book?

A savage, icepick of a hitman novel that will bury itself in your cerebellum. It’s a slippery, sexy book about the making and subsequent unmaking of a contract killer, complete with all the usual trappings and a few resolutely unusual ones. halfway through this novel, I realized that there weren't any rules to this. That you just built humans from scratch and turned them loose in your world and whatever they did, they did.  A guy stabs someone with his own fibula in this book. Eat that Macgyver. 

By Josh Bazell,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Beat the Reaper as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Doctor will see you now....

Meet Peter Brown, a young Manhattan ER Doctor who has a past he'd prefer to stay hidden. When a figure from the old days emerges it looks increasingly unlikely that his secret will stay intact.
Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is given three months to live, and it's clear to Peter that the clock is ticking for both of them. He must do whatever it takes to keep him - and his patient - alive.

It's time to beat the reaper....


Book cover of The Doctor Stories

Mahala Yates Stripling Author Of Bioethics and Medical Issues in Literature

From my list on medical/scientific stories that show what it means to be human.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an independent scholar who read Mortal Lessons, Richard Selzer’s book of essays about our common human condition - mortality. I began writing the biography of this Yale surgeon who influenced the literature-and-medicine movement, ushering in patient-centered care. I read everything by and about him, gaining a background in the medical humanities. In the middle of this project, I was asked to write Bioethics and Medical Issues in Literature. The first edition came out in 2005; subsequently I updated and published a second paperback edition in 2013, accessible by the general public and used as a complete curriculum. Clearly, reading literature helps us explore what makes us human.

Mahala's book list on medical/scientific stories that show what it means to be human

Mahala Yates Stripling Why did Mahala love this book?

I knew Richard Selzer (1928-2016) for the last twenty-five years of his life, and I have read all of his 15 books. With 27 selections, The Doctor Stories is a good introductory volume.

I believed him to be a gentle soul, so I was shocked by his admission in "Brute" about a time when he was a tired resident working in the ER. He stitched a drunken patient’s earlobes to a gurney to hold him still while sewing up a laceration in his forehead; he smiled cruelly.

I now see how Selzer’s confession has influenced other doctors to break the code of silence and change their dehumanizing ways. It ushered in patient-centered, compassionate care that we all benefit from. Sometimes called “Baroque,” Selzer’s poetic language is my cup of tea. 

By Richard Selzer,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Doctor Stories is Richard Selzer's selection of his own short stories, culled from three decades of writing, along with two new stories and an introduction detailing his literary beginnings. Drawing from his classic books, Selzer portrays the interactions of people at moments of crisis and drama. His signature style is apparent in every sentence: humane, observant, passionately descriptive, and particular, always connecting the intimate with the largest questions of life and death.


Book cover of Machine: A White Space Novel

Charley Marsh Author Of A Desperate Gamble

From my list on sci-fi for visiting alien worlds.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.

Charley's book list on sci-fi for visiting alien worlds

Charley Marsh Why did Charley love this book?

A space hospital for aliens–what a clever idea.

The second book in Bear’s White Space series, Machine is an entertaining blend of SF adventure and multiple mysteries that sucked me right in. A space hospital begins to experience escalating mishaps after a rescue mission returns with the cryo-suspended crew of a stranded generation ship along with its memory-challenged ship’s mind.

Trust is a key theme in Machine, and you can trust Bear’s capable writer hands to tell a whopping good story.

By Elizabeth Bear,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Meet Doctor Jens.

She hasn't had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years.

The first part of her job involves jumping out of perfectly good space-ships. The second part requires developing emergency treatments for sick aliens of species she's never seen before.

She loves it.

But her latest emergency is also proving a mystery:

Two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a dangerous embrace.
A mysterious crew suffering from an even more mysterious ailment.
A shipmind trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.
A murderous virus from out of time.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jens…


Book cover of Over the Santa Fe Trail to Mexico: The Travel Diaries and Autobiography of Dr. Rowland Willard

Doug Hocking Author Of Terror on the Santa Fe Trail: Kit Carson and the Jicarilla Apache

From my list on Santa Fe Trail for history buffs.

Why am I passionate about this?

Historian Doug Hocking grew up on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation of New Mexico. He knows her peoples, towns, and trails. He has completed advanced studies in history, his first love, anthropology, and historical archaeology. Since retiring as an armored cavalry officer, Doug has owned his own business. With this background he has insight into America’s great commercial road, the Santa Fe Trail, and into battles and soldiering. He understands Apache lives as few others do.

Doug's book list on Santa Fe Trail for history buffs

Doug Hocking Why did Doug love this book?

Dr. Willard traveled the trail in the 1820s. He met Hugh Glass, the Revenant as Hollywood named him, and inspected his wounds. Willard brought medicine to New Mexico and Mexico where the Catholic church had made life difficult for doctors. He describes the treatments he used and it’s truly remarkable that any of his patients survived.

By Rowland Willard, Joy L. Poole (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Over the Santa Fe Trail to Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the first Anglo-Americans to record their travels to New Mexico, Dr. Rowland Willard (1794-1884) journeyed west on the Santa Fe Trail in 1825 and then down the Camino Real into Mexico, taking notes along the way. This edition of the young physician's travel diaries and subsequent autobiography, annotated by New Mexico Deputy State Librarian Joy L. Poole, is a rich historical source on the two trails and the practice of medicine in the 1820s.

Few Americans knew much about New Mexico when Willard set out on his journey from St. Charles, Missouri, where he had recently completed a…


Book cover of Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story Of A Doctor Who Got Away With Murder

Elizabeth B. Splaine Author Of Devil's Grace

From my list on medical thriller/mystery with a spiritual twist.

Why am I passionate about this?

Before becoming an opera singer, I received my Masters in Healthcare Administration and worked in various healthcare settings, from a community health center to a large teaching hospital. I learned first-hand how the best-intentioned clinicians can make mistakes, and how those mistakes can lead to unintended consequences that can harm patients. Although it’s terrifying to think about, the best defense is to self-advocate as much as possible. It’s your body and your decision. Don’t give away your power.

Elizabeth's book list on medical thriller/mystery with a spiritual twist

Elizabeth B. Splaine Why did Elizabeth love this book?

I read this book for background for my first novel, in an effort to understand why some physicians (very few, thank goodness) kill. What I discovered in this book is what I experienced in real life working for eleven years in healthcare: hospitals are breeding grounds for medical error and cover-ups. Physician, protect thyself, so to speak. The number of times this insane MD (Michael Swango) was allowed to continue practicing when he could have been stopped is appalling, but not surprising to those inside healthcare.

By James B. Stewart,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Shows how an apparently respectable young doctor murdered patients and poisoned co-workers while being consistently protected by an oblivious and dangerously secretive medical establishment.


Book cover of Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World
Book cover of Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism
Book cover of The Immortality of Influence: We Can Build the Best Minds of the Next Generation

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,586

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in doctors, resilience, and Edward III of England?

Doctors 101 books
Resilience 25 books