The Mercy Papers
10 best books like The Mercy Papers (Robin Romm): The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Thick: And Other Essays, Unless, Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11, The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief, The Long Goodbye, All the Little Live Things, Crow, The Middle Place, The Dead Moms Club: A Memoir about Death, Grief, and Surviving the Mother of All Losses
| Author | Wallace Stegner |
| ISBN | 0140139397 |
Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune—in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back...
| Author | Tressie McMillan Cottom |
| ISBN | 1620974363 |
Smart, humorous, and strikingly original thoughts on race, beauty, money, and more—by one of today's most intrepid public intellectuals
Tressie McMillan Cottom, the writer, professor, and acclaimed author of Lower Ed, now brilliantly shifts gears from running regression analyses...
| Author | Carol Shields |
| ISBN | 0007154615 |
Compulsively readable, the main character comes from a very long, proud lineage of other literary protagonists who get totally fucked over by their offspring. Although it doesn't come close to the pathos & articulation thereof of, say, Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin", nor the titan-in-decay...
Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11
Years in the making, this spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting narrative is an unforgettable portrait of 9/11.
This is a 9/11 book like no other. Masterfully weaving together multiple strands of the events in New York; at the Pentagon; and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,...
The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief
| Author | Nora McInerny Purmort |
From the host of the popular podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, comes a wise, humorous roadmap and caring resource for anyone going through the loss of a loved one—or even a difficult life moment.
In the span of a few weeks, thirty-something Nora McInerny had a miscarriage, lost her father...
| Author | Meghan O'Rourke |
| ISBN | 1594487987 |
What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record...
All the Little Live Things
| Author | Wallace Stegner |
| ISBN | 0140154418 |
Once again, Wallace Stegner’s beautiful, descriptive prose drew me in to this novel from the beginning. It was like a lovely walk in a forest, with streams, birds singing, and maybe a waterfall. Then, just when I was completely soothed into the atmosphere, it was like a rock fell from beside the waterfall...
| Author | Boria Sax |
| ISBN | 1780238428 |
Though not generally perceived as graceful, crows are remarkably so—a single curve undulates from the tip of the bird’s beak to the end of its tail. They take flight almost without effort, flapping their wings easily and ascending into the air like spirits. Crow by Boria Sax is a celebration of the...
| Author | Kelly Corrigan |
| ISBN | 1401303366 |
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Corrigan opens her memoir with these words: "The thing you need to know about me is that I am George Corrigan's daughter, his only daughter."
She continues with an unabashed tribute to the first man in her life.
George Corrigan emerges as an...
The Dead Moms Club: A Memoir about Death, Grief, and Surviving the Mother of All Losses
| Author | Kate Spencer |
| ISBN | 1580056873 |
Kate Spencer lost her mom to cancer when she was 27. In The Dead Moms Club, she walks readers through her experience of stumbling through grief and loss, and helps them to get through it, too. This isn't a weepy, sentimental story, but rather a frank, up-front look at what it means to go through gruesome...
After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?
| Author | Claire Bidwell Smith |
| ISBN | 1594633061 |
In After This, acclaimed author, and therapist Claire Bidwell Smith confronts the question she encounters every day in private practice—what happens after we die?
In an exploration of the afterlife that is part personal, part prescriptive—Smith invites us on her journey...
| Author | Claire Bidwell Smith |
| ISBN | 1594630887 |
Claire Bidwell Smith -- an only child -- was just fourteen years old when both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other. "I've already come to the conclusion that I will probably be parentless by the time I am thirty," Claire writes in her powerful debut.
As her mother...
Cory Taylor is one of Australia’s celebrated novelists, the author of the brilliant Me and Mr Booker (winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Pacific region), and My Beautiful Enemy (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award).
At the age of sixty, she is dying of melanoma-related brain...
Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love
| Author | Matthew Logelin |
| ISBN | 0446564303 |
Matt Logelin writes a courageous and searingly honest memoir about the first year of his life following the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife.
Matt and Liz Logelin were high school sweethearts. After years of long-distance dating, the pair finally settled together in Los Angeles,...
An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes
| Author | Randy Ribay |
| ISBN | 1440588147 |
As their senior year approaches, four diverse friends joined by their weekly Dungeons & Dragons game struggle to figure out real life. Archie's trying to cope with the lingering effects of his parents' divorce, Mari's considering an opportunity to contact her biological mother, Dante's working...
My Life in a Cat House: True Tales of Love, Laughter, and Living with Five Felines
Celebrate the human-feline bond with all its joys, mysteries, and life-changing moments.
Gwen Cooper—author of the blockbuster international bestseller Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life With a Blind Wonder Cat—returns with the ongoing...
Losing Your Parents, Finding Yourself: The Defining Turning Point of Adult Life
An eloquent book that explores the impact on one's life of losing a parent as an adult, and the effect it has on families, careers, and friendships--now in paperback.
Losing a parent is an event that happens, sooner or later, to nearly everyone. Yet seldom has the impact of parental death on the...
Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
| Author | Hope Edelman |
| ISBN | 0738210269 |
An instant bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters explores the myriad ways that losing a mother can affect almost every aspect and passage of a woman's life. First published a decade ago, it is still the book that motherless daughters of all ages look to for...
