Fans pick 100 books like The Bitch

By Pilar Quintana, Lisa Dillman (translator),

Here are 100 books that The Bitch fans have personally recommended if you like The Bitch. 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 Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama

Sivan Piatigorsky-Roth Author Of Diana: My Graphic Obsession

From my list on graphic nonfiction that focuses on women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles. 

Sivan's book list on graphic nonfiction that focuses on women

Sivan Piatigorsky-Roth Why did Sivan love this book?

Fun Home is Alison Bechdel’s most famous work (and it is phenomenal), but this one captured my heart. While the former focuses on her father, here Bechdel turns her focus on her relationship with her mother, weaving in a lot of psychoanalysis and modernist literature.

Bechdel’s characteristic intricacy and attention to detail are on full display, and the frequent inclusion of dreams and their interpretation (a particular interest of mine) make the whole book feel almost surreal yet completely grounded.

By Alison Bechdel,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An expansive, moving and captivating graphic memoir from the author of Fun Home.

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a literary phenomenon. While Fun Home explored Bechdel's relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, this memoir is about her mother - a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood... and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf.

'As absorbing as…


Book cover of A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

Laura Jean Baker Author Of The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir

From my list on the dark complexities of motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

I wear many aprons. I am a writer; a professor of creative writing and literature; a mother to five children – daughters and sons; the wife of a criminal defense attorney; and the daughter of therapists. I read and write at the intersection of these influences: crime, motherhood, and psychology. When I teach children’s literature, I lean toward the Brothers Grimm. Childhood is grittier – more suspenseful – when we darken the stories. The same is true of motherhood. Nobody wants to read about a perfect mother, especially when mothers spend so much of our psychic energy worried about our children in the forms of violence, illness, and death. I prefer to seek out books that complicate the otherwise pristine stories of our lives we pretend to tell.

Laura's book list on the dark complexities of motherhood

Laura Jean Baker Why did Laura love this book?

If you vividly remember the Columbine High School shooting or any of the horrific moments of spectacle violence in the subsequent two decades (Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, etc.), this book answers questions you might have been afraid to ask, such as, how do parents of these “monsters next door”– in particular their mothers – survive in the wake of such horror, and where do they find grace? As a mother to three boys and two girls, in a 21st-century America that continues to be plagued by gun violence, I read (and re-read) Sue Klebold’s honest story, aware on every page, that the reverberating effects of Columbine, complete with active-shooter training in our kids’ schools, still permeate our everyday lives.

By Sue Klebold,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.

For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could…


Book cover of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear

Bethany Ball Author Of The Pessimists

From my list on surviving or being obliterated by domestic life.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I was raised without a religion, for more than half my life I’ve been involved in meditation and yogic communities. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly 

Bethany's book list on surviving or being obliterated by domestic life

Bethany Ball Why did Bethany love this book?

If you are a Gen Xer like me and you wax nostalgia about the freedom of the mothers of your childhood vs. the shackles of parenting in the early twenty-first century as I have, Kim Brooks’ book is for you. Kim made the most grievous error a parent can make today: she left her four-year-old in her minivan in the parking lot of a rural Target so she could quickly grab an item. Though her child was fine, someone called the police. This event sent Kim down a rabbit hole to find out: is the American childhood as dangerous as people think? Her remarkable, thought-provoking book argues that childhood is remarkably safe, children should be exploring their environs, and some form of free-range parenting for many parents and kids should be the norm rather than the exception. This has been my philosophy since having children, and I was happy to…

By Kim Brooks,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Small Animals as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One cool spring morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision to leave her four-year-old son in the car while she ran into a store. What happened would consume the next several years of her life and ultimately motivated her to begin writing about the broader subject of parenthood and fear. In Small Animals, Brooks asks, Of all the emotions inherent in parenting, is there any more universal or profound than fear? To be a parent is to be afraid. And yet, the objects and intensity of our fear vary based on culture, temperament, and the historical moment in which we…


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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 Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

Laura Jean Baker Author Of The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir

From my list on the dark complexities of motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

I wear many aprons. I am a writer; a professor of creative writing and literature; a mother to five children – daughters and sons; the wife of a criminal defense attorney; and the daughter of therapists. I read and write at the intersection of these influences: crime, motherhood, and psychology. When I teach children’s literature, I lean toward the Brothers Grimm. Childhood is grittier – more suspenseful – when we darken the stories. The same is true of motherhood. Nobody wants to read about a perfect mother, especially when mothers spend so much of our psychic energy worried about our children in the forms of violence, illness, and death. I prefer to seek out books that complicate the otherwise pristine stories of our lives we pretend to tell.

Laura's book list on the dark complexities of motherhood

Laura Jean Baker Why did Laura love this book?

As a mother and a Women’s and Gender Studies educator, I was enthralled by Ayelet Waldman’s Modern Love scandal of 2005 in which she confessed to loving her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, more than their four children, after which she landed a spot on the Oprah Winfrey stage to defend her position. Bad Mother picks up where that controversy left off, exploring the double standard for mothers, who are expected to see and treat children as the centers of their universe. This book is irreverent and refreshing. Perfect mothers – so-called “good moms” – are for Mother’s Day portraits only. This is a book to read on any other day of the year.

By Ayelet Waldman,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'I want to be in the company of her frank intelligence forever' Nigella Lawson
In our mothers' day there were good mothers, indifferent mothers, and occasionally, great mothers. Today we have only Bad Mothers: If you work, you're neglectful; if you stay home, you're smothering. If you discipline, you're buying them a spot on the shrink's couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as a "bad mother"?
Writing with remarkable candor, and dispensing much hilarious and helpful…


Book cover of Missionaries

Julia Marie Davis Author Of Catbird

From my list on war, power, and the fragility of humanity.

Why am I passionate about this?

Each of these novels, in their own way, forces us to confront the realities of war and power, showing how fragile humanity truly is. They’ve inspired me to reflect on how interconnected we are, especially regarding the scars of conflict. I am reminded of the John Donne poem that inspired Hemingway’s title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)–which begins: “No man is an island, intire of its selfe; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine.”  War doesn’t just affect the soldiers: war has its hooks in us all.

Julia's book list on war, power, and the fragility of humanity

Julia Marie Davis Why did Julia love this book?

This book is an eye-opening look into modern warfare, particularly in the context of Colombia and America’s military involvement there. Klay, a veteran himself, writes with a moral clarity that brings home the idea that war is never just a localized conflict—it’s part of a much bigger web of power, politics, and personal ambition. The novel follows multiple perspectives, from American soldiers to Colombian civilians, each grappling with their role in the chaos.

What I found most compelling is how Klay shows the ripple effects of violence—how decisions made in one corner of the world can devastate communities thousands of miles away. This book intimates tough questions about the ethics of intervention and how far-reaching the consequences of these decisions can be. It’s an intimate, often painful look at how war transforms individuals, and it challenges us to think about the cost of global conflict—not just for those on the…

By Phil Klay,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Expansive, explosive and epic' Marlon James
'A courageous book' New York Times Book Review

A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR

Neither Mason, a US Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America's long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet, for them, war still exerts a terrible draw - the noble calling, the camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. Where else in the world can such a person go?

All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with the local government to stamp out a vicious civil war and keep the predatory narco gangs at…


Book cover of Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All

Jason Kersten Author Of The Last Counterfeiter: The Story of Fake Money, Real Art, and Forging the Impossible $100 Bill

From my list on crime books that explode into larger worlds.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a window-seat person. If I’m on a trip, I want to see much more than the device propelling me forward. In crime books, the vehicle is always the crime, but I want that felonious little engine to also propel me through realms where I become more explorer than passenger, where I’ve entered marvelous and unexpected worlds that become characters in themselves. It almost doesn’t matter what that world is, whether it’s 19th-century Chicago architecture, bitcoin cartels or octopus linguistics. As long as it’s well-researched and rendered with depth, precision, and passion, your ticket to a crime gets you at least two books, or even genres, for one!

Jason's book list on crime books that explode into larger worlds

Jason Kersten Why did Jason love this book?

My favorite true crime books—and most of my favorite non-fiction books—tend to be character-driven, read like novels, and tell a larger story through the protagonist’s lens. I found myself getting lost in George Jung’s journey as a drug smuggler and loving that sometimes it felt almost incidental that he was at the criminal nexus of a massive cultural phenomenon taking place.

I also love it when books and protagonists create conflicting emotional reactions. Jung’s likeability, coupled with the destructiveness of the business he helped pioneer, rings true to life; I found myself rooting for him at times, then despising him, and always wondering where the chips would fall in this improbable journey.

By Bruce Porter,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

BLOW is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pable Escobar's Medellin cartel-- the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine, turning a drug used primarily by the entertainment elite into a massive…


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Book cover of Rooted in Sunrise

Rooted in Sunrise By Beth Dotson Brown,

Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…

Book cover of Virus Tropical

Camilo Aguirre Author Of What Remains: Personal and Political Histories of Colombia

From my list on international documentary comics about the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Documentary Comics are this genre of comics in which you can make a community visible, denounce a crime or expose yourself to the world. Being able to dialogue with the world while dialoguing with the reader is amazing. The elements you have to take into account the things you can hide in the silence of a drawing, compelling the reader to read again, to find the easter egg about that thing you really want to talk about. The ways of telling the truth in drawings. All those things are the things that I love about documentary comics.

Camilo's book list on international documentary comics about the world

Camilo Aguirre Why did Camilo love this book?

Virus Tropical is a Latin American Book, a Colombian book, an Argentinian Book, an Ecuadorian Book. Virus tropical talks about the nineties, if you are from Colombia you recognize the towns, the T-shirts, the music, the buses. So many peripheries mixed up and telling you about the coming of age of the main character. So many important things touched while touching on the most vapid-everyday things. The accents, the way the characters interact, I was able to identify with all of this while reading this graphic novel. Virus Tropical is a great book, I’m glad it was translated into English.

By Power Paola,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Vírus Tropical é uma saga familiar divertida e descolada, repleta de personagens cômicas e alopradas: um pai sacerdote que dá missas clandestinas em casa, uma mãe que lê o futuro nos dominós, uma irmã mais velha depravada, outra totalmente beata…

No meio dessa trupe, a caçula Paola tenta encontrar seu espaço e sua identidade. Com um traço fino, expressivo e cheio de detalhes, Power Paola nos mergulha no âmago dessa singular família colombiana.

Dividido em capítulos curtos e temáticos, e escrito num estilo ritmado e com muitos diálogos, Vírus Tropical consegue emocionar e entreter associando o melodrama ao humor.


Book cover of I Don't Want to Eat Bugs

Loralee Evans Author Of Felicity and the Featherless Two-Foot

From my list on lovable animal characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my mom or dad while they read me stories like The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter or Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. These memories, along with many great teachers who got me excited about stories, are what helped me develop a love of reading and writing. I love stories with animal characters in them, whether they’re the main characters, or simply there in a supporting role.

Loralee's book list on lovable animal characters

Loralee Evans Why did Loralee love this book?

This is a cute children’s story great for bedtime, or anytime! It follows the story of little Lisbon as she is hunting for a snack. All her animal friends have suggestions that work great for them, but Lisbon is a human! She doesn’t want to eat bugs or any of their animal food!

This is a great read-aloud book for parents with children, but the font was specifically chosen to make it easier for children to read as well.

By Rachel Branton, Tim Petersen (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked I Don't Want to Eat Bugs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bugs are for the birds! Lisbon is hungry and it’s hard to wait for dinner. When her animal friends try to help her find something tasty to eat, the real the problems begin! Join Lisbon on her funny misadventures.

Each beautiful illustration is designed to inspire the imaginations of children. An activity page at the end of the book allows for more fun as they search for special items in the illustrations.

While I Don’t Want to Eat Bugs is a great read-aloud book for parents, teachers, and other adults to share with children, we have chosen fonts that are…


Book cover of Kings of Cocaine: Inside the Medellín Cartel, an Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and International Corruption

Russell C. Crandall Author Of Drugs and Thugs: The History and Future of America's War on Drugs

From my list on what the war on drugs is really about.

Why am I passionate about this?

Over my two decades as a scholar of American foreign policy and international politics, I had multiple opportunities to serve as a Latin America foreign policy aide. Given that Latin America plays a central role in the U.S.-hatched modern war on drugs, much of my policymaking was directly or indirectly tied to drug policy. I thus wrote Drugs and Thugs above all to make sure that I had a good sense of the history of this seemingly eternal conflict, one that is “fought” as much at home as abroad. 

Russell's book list on what the war on drugs is really about

Russell C. Crandall Why did Russell love this book?

Decades before Netflix’s hit series Narcos, Gugliotta and Leen turned their prize-winning series of articles in The Miami Herald into a highly original book, Kings of Cocaine. What astounds me is how well the author’s uncovering the psychopathic violence, unimaginable profits, and political and social corruption of the Colombian cocaine trade. And this rot and bloodshed were not just occurring in the less developed Colombia but right inside Ronald Reagan’s America. 

By Guy Gugliotta,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s they controlled more than fifty percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive -- supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring.…


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Book cover of Ferry to Cooperation Island

Ferry to Cooperation Island By Carol Newman Cronin,

James Malloy is a ferry captain--or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by a "girl" named Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored.

When he discovers a…

Book cover of Wild Card

Sable Hunter Author Of Cowboy Heat

From my list on romances full of emotion, adventure, and heat.

Why am I passionate about this?

Emotional novels are my forte. I love to read them, and I especially love to write them. Most folks say they want a book they can’t put down – but I search for ones that I have to put down and walk away from long enough to pull myself together. I want stories that linger with me, that infiltrate my dreams – books that inspire me to create works in their honor. While my life is great, sometimes I just want to get away to a world where right prevails, long conquers all, and holding out for a hero is not an impossible dream. Trust me, these picks will not disappoint. 

Sable's book list on romances full of emotion, adventure, and heat

Sable Hunter Why did Sable love this book?

My God, this book ripped my heart out and put it back together again. I love stories that make me cry and I’ve made that a goal in my own writing. I want to make the reader laugh, weep, and swoon – then I know I’ve done my job. This book fulfills those requirements in spades. I adored this story. I’ve reread this book a dozen times or more. The characters, Nathan & Bella, will be with me forever. 

By Lora Leigh,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

It was supposed to be simple. All Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had to do was rescue three young girls from a Columbia drug cartel, then allow himself to be captured long enough to draw out a government spy. That was before his mission went disastrously wrong...and before his wife, Bella, was told that Nathan was never coming home.Bella's mourned her husband's death for three long years. But she has no idea he's still alive. Forced to assume a new identity, the man Nathan is now dead. If he can get back to his wife, can he keep the secret of…


Book cover of Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
Book cover of A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy
Book cover of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear

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Interested in Colombia, art, and mothers?

Colombia 40 books
Art 957 books
Mothers 96 books