As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same.
This collection of essays took me outside of my grief and reminded me that we live in a world filled with wonder.
Brain Doyle is a masterful storyteller, and the way he sees the world, with such curiosity and attention to detail, prompted me to walk outside, to study the smallest of wildflowers, to listen to the song of the wood thrush, to let my sadness and loss be part of something so much bigger than myself.
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty- first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that…
I’m a romance novelist who writes about otherwise smart people who deal badly with their feelings. Love, sorrow, jealousy, anger, hopelessness, and grief make appearances in my books because I write in a genre that centers the emotional lives of its characters. When I’m not wreaking havoc on fictional people, I take long walks and eavesdrop on conversations. I’m a recent transplant to Toronto, Canada, after having lived in New York City for more than 20 years.
James finds out that he has terminal brain cancer and starts to wind up his affairs, including looking for Andy, his lost love. This book takes place in the reality of James’s diagnosis with family and friends sometimes painful reactions to his illness and in the alternate universe of James’ increasingly real hallucinations of a life that could have been with Andy. This book both devastated and buoyed me with its intense and very real portrayal of someone grieving his own life, but who nonetheless seizes the chance to make give himself a happy resolution.
With one diagnosis, editor James Daniels learns that he's literally running out of time. Looking at his life, he sees one regret: Andy, the one that got away. Andy was the first man that James ever loved, but Andy has been gone for years, and might not want to be found.
But as his cancer progresses and James starts to lose his grip on time and memory, it might just be that time and memory are losing their grip on James, too.
It's the biggest and most important re-write of his life. Restoring love from nothing but memory might be…
What can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic. There’s nothing better than a great romance novel set in the past when chivalry was not dead. I’m a published author of more than twenty-five novels, including a great pirate series. I grew up in Florida and fell in love with the tropics as I sat on the beach and dreamt of handsome pirates. Once I became a Christian, I started reading Christian romances but found many of them moved a little slow to my liking, so I decided to write one myself! I have a BA in Computer Science and have won several awards for my writing.
I just love time travel stories. If you couple that with the Medieval time period, I’m there. Tamara Leigh is one of the best Medieval authors out there. This was one of the first books I read of hers, and I was hooked. If you like time travel, romance, great history, and a fun and exciting plot, you will love this book!.
Sleep disorders specialist Kennedy Plain has been diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. When her research subject dies after trying to convince her he has achieved dream-induced time travel and her study is shelved, she enlists herself as a subject to complete her research. But when she dreams herself into 14th-century England and falls into the hands of Fulke Wynland, a man history has condemned as a murderer, she must not only stay alive long enough to find a way to return to her own time, but prevent…
I think there’s a little voyeur in all of us, which is why we love reading memoirs. These stories typically are written by people who’ve wrestled with a life-changing event and emerged on the other side with wisdom to share. Whether they’ve grappled with a heartbreaking loss, a debilitating illness, or an unsettling change in circumstances that left them reeling, authors who temper their truth with humor are the ones who inspire me most. Finding hilarity in the midst of hardship is no easy feat, but it reminds us that humor is a great coping skill.
Actor and comedian Rob Delaney won my heart in the series Catastrophe. In this memoir, told with unflinching honesty, he shares the story of losing his two-year-old son, Henry, to brain cancer.
As a writer, I couldn’t stop thinking about how difficult this must’ve been for Delaney to do—to relive this all over and over again, putting it down and then rereading it countless times before it went to publication. But in doing so, he keeps his son close, and his humor amid the darkest days is an absolute inspiration. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Delaney, and his delivery and timing make this a must-listen.
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This is the story of what happens when you lose a child, and everything you discover about life in the process, by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe.
In 2018, Rob Delaney’s two-year-old son, Henry, died of a brain tumor. A Heart That Worksis Delaney’s intimate, unflinching, and…
I embarked on this arduous journey of making sense of the I in AI while working as an Assistant Professor of Finance, which, however, began to look increasingly uninteresting and oppressive. With this innovative endeavor, I return home to philosophy. Apart from being passionate about AI in academia, I’m a tech entrepreneur by heart with three software start-ups in Germany, Switzerland, and Malawi under my belt. Moreover, I served as Deputy Director of and Head of AI at the Swiss Fintech Innovation Lab in Zurich, as Director of Startup Grind Geneva, and I continue to fulfill my role as start-up coach/judge and mentor in various startup programs.
If there were only five things I could bring to an island to live on, Terrel Miedaner’s deeply thought-provoking fiction book The Soul of Anna Klane would be among those five items.
His book is on a question which is more fundamental than the one on the I in AI. The Soul of Anna Klane ponders the many sides of the question of what constitutes life and consciousness: the scientific, the atheistic, and the religious with due respect.
It showed me how little we know about the brain, mind, and soul. And if we don’t understand the center of human intelligence, how can we make sense of the I in AI? Undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read. For this reason, it would be on an island where I only possess five things so that I’m not distracted from reading it again and again. The effect would…
She's the golden darling of a wealthy genius. A child-prodigy. Yogi adept. And dying of brain tumor. She wants to heal herself, but the courts and the doctors cry "no" - and enter her brain with an incredible million-dollar probe that cures her body, while it splits her soul -- and sends it hurtling into a psychic hell...
Only Anatol Klane knows of his daughter's spirit-death. Now he must take her life... and convince an astonished world that he has set her free...
Early in my life, I developed a keen appreciation of and a strong affinity for the unique culture encompassing the Jersey Shore, a lifestyle that unites infinite waves, distinctive art, soulful music, sand between one’s toes, and the dream of the endless summer. The sea speaks to me, and always has. My appreciation of the ocean and shore living leads me to seek comparable books with hopes of learning from and/or connecting with other writers like me, and it served as the basis of the setting for my novel, Enduring the Waves. I hope you make a similar connection to one of the books on my recommendation list.
As a lifetime shore resident, I gravitate to books set at the beaches of New Jersey, and such is the case for Katie Runde’s debut novel The Shore.
Her core growing-up memories stemmed from both living at the shore and from her family’s boardwalk/beached based businesses. She used her experiences to craft a deep and moving novel about how Brian Dunne’s wife, Margot, and two teenage daughters, Liz and Evy, come to terms with unimaginable grief and loss.
When I interviewed Runde for an article I wrote for Jersey Shore Magazine, we bonded over shared experiences of transforming grief into writing beautiful stories set at similar shore locations despite very different journeys for our main characters. The Shore helped me to examine my own grief through different lenses.
A mother and her two daughters spend a summer grappling with heartbreak, young love, and the weight of secrets in this “deeply felt family saga” (Entertainment Weekly) hailed as “one of the best beach reads of all time” (Today).
Brian and Margot Dunne live year-round in Seaside, just steps away from the bustling boardwalk, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, making their living by quickly turning over rental houses for tourists. But the family’s future becomes precarious when Brian develops a brain tumor, transforming into an erratic version of himself. Amidst the chaos…
Ultimately, I’m someone who enjoys a good adventure. Prior to the age of twenty, I had never gone on a vacation or been camping, and the only place I saw Mickey Mouse was on television. Determined to experience a more fulfilling life, I set my sights on becoming a world traveler. I’ve done almost everything to transform the dream into a reality. I’ve studied abroad, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, worked for an international NGO, served in the U.S. Navy, and done some off-the-grid exploring. After spending nine years abroad and visiting thirty countries, I’m finally a published author. Life Travel And The People In Betweenis my debut memoir.
I must admit that I didn’t know who Nicholas Sparks was prior to reading this book. Had he stuck to romance novels, I would’ve never discovered his amazing life story. Three Weeks with My Brother is so unique that it’s almost unfitting to call it a travel memoir. Instead, it’s a heartfelt international journey down memory lane as Nicholas and his brother Micah take the reader through the ups and downs of their lives. Readers not only get to experience an adventure around the world, but they also encounter a story filled with love, tragedy, success, and everything that makes a person who they are. In this case, that person is Nicholas Spark, a best-selling author, and screenwriter.
The story of two brothers deeply bound by love and tragedy and an extraordinary chronicle of a life-affirming trip
In January 2003 Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world.
An adventure by any measure, this trip was especially meaningful as it marked another milestone in the life journey of two brothers who, by their early thirties, were the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas and Micah travel the globe, from the Taj Mahal to Machu Picchu, the story of their family slowly unfolds.
As an independent author, I’ve been lucky enough to find a wealth of other independent authors out there. People who are doing things that aren’t quite mainstream. Artists who are experimenting with the written word and doing truly unique things. Where the world is filled with books made for the sole purpose of being turned into movies, these authors are creating works of fiction that are suited for the written word. Masterpieces that will make you think and want to find even more new forms of fiction. Simply put, independent authors are pushing books into new realms that you simply can’t find in the mainstream market.
The Astrocytoma Diaries by Ken Mooney is something I feel everyone absolutely must-read. At its most simplest, it's a first-hand account of what it is like to battle cancer. But its heart is much more than that. It's a detailed look at the human condition, of how a person can be given the terrible news that they have a tumor on their brain, and can choose to not only not give up, but face that battle head-on.
Read this book. It's heart-wrenching. But it's a book about survival. A book about war. A book about the human spirit. As well as being a book about cancer.
23rd May 2014. The day I was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
I faced diagnosis. I faced surgery (awake!) I faced radiotherapy. I faced chemotherapy. I got my treatment and I'm still here.
During treatment, I tried to keep a diary, a place to share my hopes and frustrations. It was also a place to discover a lot about myself, where humour and movies and music made the experience all the more bearable. This is not something anyone should ever have to go through. But this is how I came this far and tried to kick its ass.
I tell people when I meet them that when I married my husband, I got roots. I moved a lot as a child, living in small country towns to suburbs of big cities, and my favorite place by far is in the country, surrounded by nature, feeling that sense of belonging. My husband and I live in his great-grandparent's house in the country, next door to his mother, who still lives in the house where she grew up and raised my husband. There is nothing I love more than sharing my love for Jesus with readers through fictional situations that could really happen.
Paper Dolls takes place in the fictitious town of Habakkuk, where everyone knows everyone else. Besides feeling as though I’m part of this sisterhood of women, I love how the author’s focus of this book is to allow me to get to know all of the women equally. Most books will start out with one main character, then the next in the series shares about another, and so forth. Kara Hunt steps outside the box and introduces all the women equally in the first book, making me want to read about each one of them more in-depth in the subsequent books. This series is full of humor, romance, suspense, mystery, and a lot of sisterhood love.
As a massive nerd from a very young age, I have always gravitated towards science and sci-fi stories. When it comes to YA and NA novels, most tend to be dystopian fiction or borrow heavily from fantasy. Hard sci-fi scenarios and real scientific speculation are hard to come by. When well-researched science meets an awesome storyline, that is my definition of perfection—what I love reading and also what I strive for as a writer.
This medical sci-fi thriller is an exploration of the darker side of biotechnology. It follows a med student as he unravels the strange mystery of multiple cases of medulloblastoma and how a prestigious medical center is claiming a 100% remission rate for this type of cancer. Readers sink into the medical world and are kept at the edge of their seats as this mesmerizing tale takes them on a wild ride from start to finish.
Sean, a highly motivated medical student in his third year at Harvard Medical School, is thrilled to take a two-month research post at the renowned Forbes Cancer Centre. But Sean is denied the opportunity to work on the cancer project and so he starts his own investigations into the centre.
