Books worth knowing about

Palliative Care for Patients & Clinicians

Where to start if you or someone you love is living with a serious illness - and what I hand to colleagues who want to understand the work.

• Gone from My Sight: The Dying Experience↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Barbara Karnes, RN

• The In-Between↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Hadley Vlahos, RN

  A memoir from a hospice nurse about the cases she has seen. An easy read, and a good insight into what actually happens in hospice.

• End of Life Guideline Series↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Barbara Karnes, RN

• A Beginner's Guide to the End↗ (opens in a new tab)

  BJ Miller, MD, and Shoshana Berger

• Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Suleika Jaouad

• The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Nina Riggs

• Care Boss↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jennifer A. O'Brien

• Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Victoria Sweet

• Because I Knew You↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Robert Macauley

• Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Rachel Clarke

• Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jessica Nutik Zitter, MD

• That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Sunita Puri

• Your Good Death↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Karen Lutfey Spencer, PhD

• My Invisible Death↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Laura Gallagher

Hospice, Dying & Grief

• And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Fredrik Backman

• The Collected Regrets of Clover↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Mikki Brammer

• Proof of Heaven↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Eben Alexander, MD

• Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Caitlin Doughty

• Any Ordinary Day↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Leigh Sales

• The End of Your Life Book Club: A Memoir↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Will Schwalbe

• In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Amy Bloom

• The Hospice Doctor's Widow: A Journal↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jennifer A. O'Brien

• The Hospice Doctor's Widow: An Art Journal of Caregiving and Grief↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jennifer A. O'Brien

• Death Is a Day Worth Living↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Ana Claudia Quintana Arantes

• Intimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us How to Live↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Marie de Hennezel

• The Five Invitations↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Frank Ostaseski

• With the End in Mind↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Kathryn Mannix

• Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Julie McFadden, RN

• What Not To Say At A Funeral↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Amy Havis

Pediatric Grief Books

For children who are grieving, and for the adults trying to find the words.

• The Invisible String↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Patrice Karst

• The Invisible String Workbook↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Patrice Karst and Dana Wyss

• The Invisible String Family Celebration↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Patrice Karst

• The Invisible String Series: 4-Book Collection↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Patrice Karst

• The Invisible Leash↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Patrice Karst

• The ABCs of Grief: Coping↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jessica Correnti

• The Memory Tree↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Britta Teckentrup

• The Hare-Shaped Hole↗ (opens in a new tab)

  John Dougherty

• What Not To Say At A Funeral↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Amy Havis

Palliative Care Career Must Reads

If you're thinking about a career in palliative care, start here.

• Primer of Palliative Care, 7th Edition↗ (opens in a new tab)

  American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine

  The standard starting text.

• When Breath Becomes Air↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Paul Kalanithi

  A neurosurgeon's memoir, written after his own diagnosis with terminal lung cancer.

• Being Mortal↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Atul Gawande

  On aging, mortality, and where medicine stops being able to help.

• The Four Things That Matter Most↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Ira Byock, MD

• Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Jessica Nutik Zitter, MD

• Mastering Communication with Seriously Ill Patients↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Anthony Back, Robert Arnold, and James Tulsky

And if you'd like to talk it through with someone, I'm always glad to hear from trainees looking for mentorship. Contact me.

Book Club Reads

I love my monthly book club, so some of my favorite reads are in there too - novels, nothing to do with medicine.

• Book club picks on my Amazon page↗ (opens in a new tab)

  Authors like Kristin Hannah, Emily Henry, Nisha Sharma and Carley Fortune.