Fans pick 48 books like The Sense of Death

As much as I love complex, dark protagonists, I adore a lighter side now and then. I found it in this book with the main character, Shelby Nichols. She just makes me laugh.

I even found myself reading sections out loud to my husband, who laughed right along with me. Shelby is a wife and mother, and after being shot in the head, she develops the ability to read people’s minds. Her sudden awareness of what her teenage children and husband are thinking takes the plot up to a whole new level.

This is one ability I’m glad I don’t have. I think I’d rather not know.

I have to say it—Charlaine Harris can write a good story. I read all the Stackhouse books, but it was when I found her Harper Connelly series that I was truly hooked. This book has all the elements I love: a complex female protagonist, good supporting characters, and a unique psychic ability.

Combine all that with great writing, and it doesn’t get any better. I read this book and then quickly flew through the rest of the series. This was the first book I’d read featuring a psychic twist, and discovering this new genre opened the door to my writing journey.

My favorite part of this book is the supporting characters. T.J., Dobbs, and Sparky—the wonder dog. Funny, smart, and wise, the two older gents carry the story from beginning to end, taking the town’s new arrival under their protective wings.

It’s Jessie, the new girl in town, who has the psychic ability, but it’s T. J. and Dobbs, who figure out how to put the pieces together. Like all my favorite books, there is mystery, suspense, and romance, but what I really like is the psychic element. It’s different from most.

Eloise Montgomery is my kind of protagonist. She survives a tragedy, suffers a great loss, and, waking up from a coma, finds herself with a new and frightening psychic ability. One that she puts to good use.

I like her grit and determination, along with her moments of doubt and despair. She’s human. A normal, everyday woman is thrust into a life she didn’t expect and is making the best of it—a situation I can identify with. Except for her psychic ability. That I don’t have, but how cool would that be?

This novel embraces all the darkest elements of the Gilded Age—the occult, greed, cruelty, and the notorious asylum for the insane on Blackwell’s Island and I’m here for all of it! The sleuth is Amelia Matthews, a psychic who suffered a head injury that both expanded her psychic ability and landed her in Blackwell Asylum. She is not insane, but neither are many of the other women locked up with her—at least not when they first arrived. It’s chilling to know that this really happened to women who were betrayed by their nearest and dearest. Stacie Murphy made me feel like her characters were real, and I wanted justice for them! 

What’s more fraught and intimate than friends? Sisters.   

Munro’s title story is about a relationship of extremes: sisters Char and Et can laugh over the darkest shit imaginable, and yet they also have certain psychic rooms they’ll never let the other into. Is this love or hostility? More happens in here than I can say, except that Char is the beautiful sister and Et the sharp-tongued, practical one, and an old flame returns and wreaks havoc.

It’s Munro, so there is sex, death, and betrayal, but delivered so obliquely you aren’t always sure what the characters deliberately did. Maybe that’s why this story enraptures me: it’s about the things you’ll never get to know, and I always think I'll figure it out this time.

Peter Reidinger is confined to his bed because of a life-altering accident that renders him unable to walk.

While recuperating in the hospital, he uncovers a remarkable ability to harness generators to awaken his dormant telekinesis skills. As someone who shares a connection with a wheelchair-bound individual, I found myself closely relating to Peter's struggles.

With his new abilities and an unrelenting determination, he defies all odds to venture into space and exceed everyone's expectations. This mesmerizing tale, blends elements of science-fiction, fantasy, and gripping adventure to deliver a truly unforgettable read.

I loved this book for the new concepts it brought to me about psychic abilities, specifically telepaths that could block other’s psychic abilities.

After this, I was drawn to the book for the way it blurred the lines of reality, making me question alongside the main character if anything they were experiencing was real. I also thought the idea of the UBIK drug that kept people in a 'half-life' was fascinating and a different way to show addiction and its consequences.

Lastly, the ending was quite thrilling and kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning, even though I had work the next day! 

Far Journeys is a profound and unusual book. The story in which Robert Monroe, who was a radio executive, finds himself having spontaneous out-of-body experiences sometimes reads like science fiction. Yet it is his honest account. Dedicated to an exploration of human consciousness, he later founded a nonprofit called The Monroe Institute, which pioneered research into changing brainwaves using only binaural sounds. Monroe kept pushing the envelope with his explorations, learning to explore places beyond our world that most have only dreamed of; and it’s given me such great inspiration for my stories. It also blew my mind and helped me make sense when I had my own glimpses of the energetic realm that he describes here. This is technically his second book, but I feel it’s even better to start here.

I have the 1971 paperback printing of More Than Human, with the Robert Pepper cover art. The book has a special significance for me; although unrelated in plot, it has similarities to my book: it is science fiction, has an unusual structure, a complex timeline, deals with psychology, and features investigation and discovery. The fact that it was written in 1953, before the Internet, Earth satellites, personal computers, and cell phones, facilitates the reader’s attention to the rather complex story. Seven individuals, Lone, Janie, twins Bonnie and Beanie, Baby, Gerry, and Hip, are exemplars of inequality, with peculiar capabilities and shortcomings. The German word gestalt, meaning the forming of a pattern, describes how, together, they embody the next step in human evolution.