90 books like The Voice in My Head

I love this book so much, I blurbed it! In a world where women are often asked to be quiet, to make themselves small, Nafiza Azad’s unapologetically feminist book is breathtaking. Readers journey with Paheli and her collection of girls—the Wild Ones—helping to save girls from the pain they had to endure. On their journey, they seek Taraana, a boy with stars in his eyes, who once saved Paheli and now needs saving. While The Wild Ones is a fantasy, it is an unflinching look into the #MeToo movement, the tragedies and pain of being female, the saving grace of sisterhood, and the audacious power of resilience and hope.

Silencing Rebecca hooks the reader from the first page with the disturbing question, what happened to Rebecca? From the first line, “silence has swallowed her whole,” through jumps into the past and present, Rebecca journeys on a twisting, winding path of self-discovery, identity, and heartbreak. At once devastating and heartfelt, with prose that’s plainly spoken yet evocative, silencing Rebecca is a novel that stays with readers, long after the last word has been read.

I love books that keep me guessing and leave me unsettled about character motivation and story truth, and Into the Sublime gets the gold on all of those requirements and more! Amelie, a member of a thrill-seeking group, heads out with three other girls—H, Gia, and Devon—to find a lake called “The Sublime,” that’s said to reveal your deepest fears. Much like the underground cave system the girls find themselves in, Into the Sublime takes readers on a twisting tale full of tension and changing alliances, and an ever-tightening noose of dread and unease. What happened in those caves? Why did four girls go in but only three come out—and whose blood is Amelie covered in? This is the kind of book you stay up late to finish...then spend the next few days sleeping with the lights on. Lovers of psychological suspense and horror won't be disappointed.

A herd of wild unicorns, a gloomy forest, a changeling, and magic—The Changeling of Fenlen Forest is a perfect choice for a cozy day of reading. The book opens with Elizabeth as she searches for her lost unicorn fawn. But her search takes her to a strange land where Elizabeth resembles a missing girl. So much so, that the town’s people think she’s a changeling—and dangerous. Elizabeth, with the help of a handsome shepherd, searches for the answer behind the missing girl. But is she prepared for the secrets her search will uncover? The Changeling of Fenlen Forest is a journey into loss and identity, and it’s the perfect read for days when readers want to inhabit a mysterious new world that’s full of intrigue.

I can not praise Edward St Aubyn highly enough. He is one of my favourite authors; I love his writing because it is heart-stoppingly true and affecting.

He portrays dysfunctional family dynamics with blistering accuracy, and I felt less alone reading this because I have been haunted by my own ancestral patterns repeating themselves through generations. I not only find St Aubyn laugh-out-loud funny, but he is also a brilliant observer of social mores.

Somehow, this book manages to be anti-spiritual while being one of the most spiritually aware books I have read. I love that St Aubyn does not try to make himself likable as a writer. There’s a ruthless fearlessness to his truth that I admire, which adds to his humanity.  

The book brings together two contradictory viewpoints.

While Jackson argues that we should legalise assisted suicide in order to enable ‘good death’ and honour patients’ wishes, Keown opposes such a legislation, thinking that voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are gravely unethical and what we need to do is to improve care, not to offer death.

This is an excellent exchange of ideas that I have used in my classes on end-of-life concerns.

John Keown and I meet in Washington every once and a while. Although we disagree on whether physician-assisted suicide should be offered, we agree on the need to preserve the dignity of the person as well as on many other fundamental issues.

I greatly appreciate John’s scholarship.

One is a novel in verse I keep coming back to for the way it uses form to make the reader feel the emotional journey of its protagonists.

Crossan uses verse to capture the emotional intimacy of a relationship between two conjoined twins as they encounter challenges in everyday life, including grief. This book uses visual form so smartly and subtly to show us how these two depend on each other, as well as what it means for Tippie to find herself away from her twin. 

In 1991 I was a young lawyer, just learning about the death-with-dignity movement. I had practiced nursing and medicine for 20 years and tended many dying patients. But I’d thought little about patient choice and empowerment at the end of life. In my ignorance, I turned to Dr. Timothy Quill and was struck by his clarity and courage. Tim was the first mainstream physician to be candid and compassionate about patients’ legitimate wish to advance the time of death if cancer or other illness traps them in “their worst nightmare.” This book, and his earlier Death with Dignity, are the definitive primers into the hows and whys of medical aid in dying, a practice that is authorized in many states now, but was a felony everywhere when Dr. Quill brought it to light.

This is similar in subject to A Man Called Ove. The main protagonist is a grumpy elderly person who can’t see the point in being alive anymore, but this time she’s an older, frailer British woman, which adds a different tone to the narrative.

Eudora is looking into a trip to Switzerland as an answer to that ephemeral problem of how to shuffle off one’s mortal coil with minimal fuss. Again, it is the new friendships she makes that steer her away from her original course, and again it is a story of community and learning to live in the moment. Annie Lyons writes with warmth and humour about Eudora’s early life and addresses the topic of assisted suicide with a deft touch. It’s a brave and very enjoyable book.

Betty Rollin is best known as the award-winning national correspondent for NBC. Writing about her personal life, she sure knows how to tell a story. Long before any state recognized a legal option for assisted dying, a few brave people navigated the risks of helping a loved one exit life on their own terms. Betty and her husband, Ed, were two such people, and they were especially courageous in publicizing what they did. Last Wish was a bestseller when it came out in 1985 and again in 1999. It became an ABC TV movie in 1992 starring Patty Duke and Maureen Stapleton. Both the story and the storytelling, are captivating. Betty’s mom got the peaceful death she desired, and we got a wonderful, even humorous story of love, loyalty, and international daring.