Here are 100 books that This Mortal Coil fans have personally recommended if you like
This Mortal Coil.
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I’m an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. My work has been widely staged in London, across the UK, and internationally. I’ve had the honor of receiving the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Michael Grandage Futures Bursary Award, and I was also nominated for Political Play of the Year. Before I began writing, I worked as an anthropologist. Happy Death Club is my first nonfiction book.
I've been a huge fan of mortician Caitlin Doughty for years, and this nonfiction book (which sees Doughty traveling from Japan to Colorado to Indonesia, looking at different things people do with the bodies of their deceased loved ones and how it helps them cope with loss) made me laugh like no other death book, and it taught me a lot, too.
I was especially intrigued by the chapter on human composting: the idea that it's possible to let a body decompose naturally in the earth, so it turns to compost. When my father died I had him buried in a compostable coffin made of banana tree, without any preservatives, and I like the idea of his body feeding flowers and bugs and becoming part of the harmonious web of life.
Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world's funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry-especially chemical embalming-and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the…
In December 2000, my much-loved Grandma died. Her funeral was a standard 20-minute slot at the local crematorium, led by someone who didn’t know her. How I didn’t walk out, I’ll never know–but the experience certainly lit a fire under my work as an academic historian, which has burned ever since. As a historian, I’m passionate about what the past can teach us about how to die well: what makes for a good funeral, and for whom? How have our answers to these questions changed–or maybe not–over the decades and centuries?
Such an elegantly written exploration of landscapes of the afterlife, where people in the past believed that souls went to after death, and how those beliefs then shaped funeral customs.
The author evinces an excellent grasp of human nature, especially when discussing the Reformation and how people often clung tenaciously to old beliefs and customs, which helped them make sense of human mortality and loss.
Roaming across the country and over several centuries, this book is packed with quirky, charming examples of how people maintain relationships with their dead.
'This is a wonderful book: curious and insightful' Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
We know what happens to the body when we die, but what happens to the soul? The answer may remain a great unknown, but the question has shaped centuries of tradition, folklore and religious belief.
In this vivid history of the macabre, Carl Watkins goes in search of the ancient customs, local characters and compelling tales that illuminate how people over the years have come to terms with our ultimate fate. The result is an enthralling journey into Britain's past, from…
In December 2000, my much-loved Grandma died. Her funeral was a standard 20-minute slot at the local crematorium, led by someone who didn’t know her. How I didn’t walk out, I’ll never know–but the experience certainly lit a fire under my work as an academic historian, which has burned ever since. As a historian, I’m passionate about what the past can teach us about how to die well: what makes for a good funeral, and for whom? How have our answers to these questions changed–or maybe not–over the decades and centuries?
This classic study of the 1832 Anatomy Act is a great combination of scholarly history writing and a call for social justice.
It recounts how the Act solved the problem of corpses being stolen for medical research–by instead appropriating the bodies of poor people who had died in the workhouses. Abuses are still happening: Richardson links the Anatomy Act to the 1990s Alder Hey scandal.
This book reminds me how important it is to keep institutions that deal with the dead accountable–and to know our rights when the time comes.
In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns…
What happens when a person is placed into a medically-induced coma?
The brain might be flatlining, but the mind is far from inactive: experiencing alternate lives rich in every detail that spans decades, visiting realms of stunning and majestic beauty, or plummeting to the very depths of Hell while defying…
In December 2000, my much-loved Grandma died. Her funeral was a standard 20-minute slot at the local crematorium, led by someone who didn’t know her. How I didn’t walk out, I’ll never know–but the experience certainly lit a fire under my work as an academic historian, which has burned ever since. As a historian, I’m passionate about what the past can teach us about how to die well: what makes for a good funeral, and for whom? How have our answers to these questions changed–or maybe not–over the decades and centuries?
If our traditions of death and burial are products of the past, then what might the future of funerals look like?
I keep going back to this book because it’s such a sympathetic, insightful exploration of how social media and AI are already radically transforming our relationships with our dead. Not only that, but the very nature of memory itself is also changing in interesting ways.
The book deftly articulates both the positives and the shadow sides of grieving in an increasingly digital world, all expressed with warmth, wit, and a great understanding of the complexities of human nature.
'As charming and touching as it is astute and insightful' Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink
'This a very useful book, even perhaps for people who have never been near a computer in their lives' Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph
Seen any ghosts on your smartphone lately?
As we're compelled to capture, store and share more and more of our personal information, there's something we often forget. All that data doesn't just disappear when our physical bodies shuffle off this mortal coil. If the concept of remaining socially active after you're no longer breathing…
I love middle-grade books (for eight to twelve-year-olds), which is why I write in that genre. My Summer of L.U.C.K. trilogy is sprinkled with magical adventures, but each one has real-life kids struggling with real-life problems and finding real-world solutions. I believe that books whose characters experience magical elements along with themes of friendship, perseverance, and self-acceptance will help them learn, as I did when I was a young reader, that whatever troubles they're experiencing, other kids have those troubles too, that they're not alone, and that help is possible.
I’m a sucker for books about restored faith, particularly one with a Victorian house on the cover (see The Diamond in the Window below). That’s what caught my eye about Jess Redman’s beautifully written book, but the main character, a kid named Wunder, really drew me in and kept me reading.
I loved following Wunder’s journey as his faith in miracles falters after the death of his newborn sister. What touched me the most was how his connection with a woman–maybe a witch–who resides in the crumbling Victorian house helps reawaken his belief in everyday magic. This is one of my top favorite magical middle grade books of all time.
In the tradition of heartwrenching and hopeful middle grade novels such as Bridge to Terabithia comes Jess Redman's stunning debut about a young boy who must regain his faith in miracles after a tragedy changes his world.
Eleven-year-old Wunder Ellis is a miracologist. In a journal he calls The Miraculous, he records stories of the inexplicable and the extraordinary. And he believes every single one. But then his newborn sister dies, at only eight days old. If that can happen, then miracles can’t exist. So Wunder gets rid of The Miraculous. He stops…
I am a Canadian author/editor who both fears and loves being a stranger in a strange land. I fear the challenges, the feelings of dislocation and vulnerability. But I love the connections, the overcoming of the strangeness and the ultimate feeling of kinship. As a mom, I travelled with my kids to far away places, favouring adventure tours and staying well away from high priced hotels that separate tourists from locals. My novel, The World on Either Side, was inspired by a trek I took with my then fourteen-year-old daughter in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I bought this book for the title, and happily there are Madonnas galore in this story, including in the apartment of “two motherless dudes,” dying teen Jessie T. Serrano and his dad. This quest novel—before he dies, Jessie sets up a mysterious trip to Europe for his three cousins, best friend and girlfriend—follows five grieving young adults on a doomed pilgrimage in a strange continent. If you have ever been a teen (as I assume you have) you will connect with the six (!!) point of view characters, each flawed but achingly human. "Not all stories are about love," says one of them, but this story most definitely is.
Five teens backpack through Europe to fulfill the mysterious dying wish of their friend in this heartwarming novel from the author of The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy.
Jesse lives with his history professor dad in a house covered with postcards of images of the Madonna from all over the world. They’re gotten used to this life: two motherless dudes living among thousands of Madonnas. But Jesse has a heart condition that will ultimately cut his life tragically short. Before he dies, he arranges a mysterious trip to Europe for his three cousins, his best friend, and his girlfriend to…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
When I sold the manuscript that became The Way Back from Broken, my editor asked why I wrote it. I said, “I wrote a book about the two things I’m an expert in: grief and canoeing.” It took me ten years to find my own way back from being broken after the death of my daughter. Along that difficult and heartbreaking trail, I came to loathe people who said things like “Time heals all wounds” or “It was meant to be.” I craved those brave few who spoke and wrote with deep authenticity about how grief and loss force us to reconsider everything we’ve ever known about the world.
This award-winning, middle grade novel begins with Willa Jo and her little sister refusing to come down off their Aunt Patty’s roof. Drawn to get as close to the sky as possible, they stay up, wrestling with the recent death of their sibling. I read this book shortly after my baby died, and it gets everything right about the confusion, the magical thinking, the incomprehensible behavior of those who don’t know grief, and especially, the inability to understand a world that has, in an instant, been so dramatically altered.
A Southern charmer for fans of Newbery Honor book Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage
Audrey Couloumbis's masterful debut novel brings to mind Karen Hesse, Katherine Paterson, and Betsy Byars's The Summer of the Swans—it is a story you will never forget.
Willa Jo and Little Sister are up on the roof at Aunt Patty’s house. Willa Jo went up to watch the sunrise, and Little Sister followed, like she always does. But by mid-morning, they are still up on that roof, and soon it’s clear it wasn’t just the sunrise that brought them there.
Hello! My name is Flavia Z. Drago and I'm a Mexican picturebook maker currently living with my partner and my cat in the UK. As a child, most of the books that I read came from foreign countries, particularly Europe and the US, and these have had a huge influence on my work as an author and illustrator. However, now that I'm in charge of making the books that I would have liked as a child, I enjoy adding details of my Mexican culture whenever possible. To some extent, the books that I've shared with you collect some of the stories, experiences, and emotions that as a Mexican have impacted my life.
Death by tortoise shell, a lifeless head, excess of dance, or playing a concert? Based on true stories, in this impossible to catalogue book, you can find out the tragic, sometimes funny, but always incredible deaths of famous, and ordinary, people alike.
What I love about this book is Cecilia’s sensitivity and witty sense of humor to deal with the illustrations. While some of the deaths depicted are brutal in nature, the images are never violent or morbid, but they are rather whimsical, poetic, and rather intriguing.
The Book of Extraordinary Deaths introduces readers to the bizarre demises of thinkers, writers, monarchs, artists, and notable nobodies throughout history. Beginning in the fifth century BC with the morbidly unusual death of Aeschylus and journeying chronologically to identical twins - who died on the same day - in the present day, readers will learn of people they may or may not have ever heard of, but will forever remember for their memorable final moments. With Ruiz's witty descriptions and beautiful illustrations, her characters come to life on the page even as they reach their demises.
I am an artist and writer drawn to the intersections of non-believe. My work explores the friction points non-believers encounter and illuminates a path forward informed by reason and empathy. My writing is evidence-based, with the skepticism that comes with being an atheist, but infused with warmth, clarity, and understanding. Grief can present friction for non-believers. I aim to support those navigating such losses by providing evidence-based guidance and compassion. I hope you find some valuable nuggets in this list of books.
This book is part science, part memoir. The author shares how she applied the research she has done around resilience as she grappled with grief when her child died.
When we are grieving without the false promises of an afterlife, learning how to support ourselves as we put one foot in front of another and continue to move forward can take everything we have. By exploring concepts of resilience and well-being, Dr. Hone provides practical tools to help us cope a bit better.
The death of someone we hold dear may be inevitable; being paralysed by our grief is not. A growing body of research has revealed our capacity for resilient grieving, our innate ability to respond to traumatic loss by finding ways to grow - by becoming more engaged with our lives, and discovering new, profound meaning.
Author and resilience/well-being expert Lucy Hone, a pioneer in fusing positive psychology and bereavement research, was faced with her own inescapable sorrow when, in 2014, her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. By following the strategies of resilient grieving, she found a proactive…
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster…
I feel strongly that large segments of the population—young and old alike—have thrown out the baby of spirituality with the bathwater of organized religion. Given the current level of interreligious hatred and misunderstanding in today’s world, two things have to change. First, we need to know the basics of the world’s major religious traditions and how they evolved so that we are not making value judgments based on erroneous information and lack of understanding. Then, we have to look through the external dogmas and rituals to the spiritual principles and experiences that are of most value and that may not be reliant on any one institutional religion.
When psychologist Matthew McKay’s son, Jordan, was killed by bike thieves at age 23, McKay learned how to channel him from the other side, as recounted in his touching book Seeking Jordan. In this later book, Jordan communicates in vivid detail the stages he went through after he died.
In what amounts to a modern-day secular Book of the Dead, McKay/Jordan describes how to navigate each stage without a body, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life and instead view it as another stage of our ongoing consciousness.
Most notably, he reveals that there is no institutional or doctrinal “religion” on the other side and that the driving force of continued consciousness is love and a willingness to keep learning and growing spiritually.
A channeled guide to the life-death transition experience and how to prepare for the wonders of the afterlife
* Reveals the afterlife as a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness
* Explains how to navigate the early stages of the afterlife, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life
* Includes exercises and meditations to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit
There is no better source of information on death and the afterlife than someone who has died and lives…
