The books in our collection range from fiction and non-fiction (medical history, medical ethics and memoirs) to graphic novels and poetry.
Browse Books by Theme
Our collection covers a huge range of themes, topics and ideas - we've highlighted a handful on this page, but you can search the whole collection by clicking the Library Search link below.
See all our books on the theme of addiction, or browse some of our top picks below:
The Outrun by At the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, trying to come to terms with the alcoholism that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her days tracking Orkney's wildlife, Amy discovers how the wild can restore life and renew hope.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté takes a holistic and compassionate approach to addiction, presenting it not as a medical ‘condition’ but rather the result of a complex interplay of personal history, emotional development and brain chemistry.
Requiem for a Dream by A passionate, heart-breaking tale of the crushing weight of hope and expectation, Requiem for a Dream is a dark fable of 1970s New York.
Trainspotting by A bleak and darkly humorous look at four friends in the grip of heroin addiction in 1990s Edinburgh.
Transcendent Kingdom by A gorgeously woven narrative about a woman trying to survive the grief of a brother lost to addiction and a mother trapped in depression while pursuing her ambitions.
See all our books on the topic of ageing, or browse some of our top picks below:
Being Mortal by 'Being Mortal' is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, and where our ideas about death have gone wrong.
Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson by Mitch Albom rekindled his friendship with his college professor Morrie Schwartz in the last months of Morrie's life, when he was dying of motor neurone disease. Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college, for one final "class": lessons in how to live.
Elderhood by Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her 25 years of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself.
First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab by The author reflects on his year spent observing new medical students dissect human cadavers, concluding that besides learning the biological truths of human existence, the students also gained insight into the cycle of life and death.
Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary Idea by Winner of the 2012 Wellcome Book Prize, this biography charts one man's obsessive quest to understand the circulation of blood and overturn the long-held beliefs of his contemporaries.
To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities that present themselves when you think of your body as an outmoded device. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation of what it means to be human.
You can browse all our books on the theme of death, or take a look at some of our top picks below:
With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Told through a series of beautifully crafted stories taken from nearly four decades of clinical practice, this book answers the most intimate questions about the process of dying with honesty and humanity.- Being Mortal by 'Being Mortal' is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, and where our ideas about death have gone wrong.
Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life by Warraich explores the process, rituals and language of dying, and reveals how modern technology has changed not only how, when and where we die, but also what death means to us.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Hailed as one of the classics on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality.
You can browse all our books on the subject of disability, or check out some of our top picks below:
What the **** Is Normal?! by in this memoir Martinez describes the transition from thinking of herself as “wobbly” – “Apparently, my brain had been starved of oxygen at birth and part of it had died” – to the liberation of thinking of herself simply as “Francesca”, and finding her voice through comedy.
Mustn't Grumble: An Anthology of Writing by Disabled Women by A collection of writings by disabled women, in which they share, sometimes with humour, the everyday reality of their lives, and seek to challenge the cliches and misconceptions commonly held about disabled people.
Planet of the Blind by A memoir about coming to terms with near-blindness, this is the story of a 'lost man with a speck of something like seeing.'
You can browse all our books on the theme of ethics, or check out some of our top picks below:
The Children Act by Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge renowned for her fierce intelligence and sensitivity, is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen-year-old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. Time is running out.
Flowers for Algernon by The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence. Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the butt of everyone's jokes - until an experiment in the enhancement of intelligence turns him into a genius.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Henrietta Lacks was an African-American tobacco farmer, but her cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences.
Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Sometimes your child - the most familiar person of all - is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does?
Burnt Sugar by In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman - all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid's wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a mother who never seemed to care for her.
Detransition, Baby by A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.
Middlesex by As 1970s teenager Calliope begins to realise she is not like other girls, she uncovers a astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, in this intersex, inter-generational epic.
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes A Man by The author - a trans man - trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence.
The Trauma Cleaner by Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife…But as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less.
What We're Told Not to Talk about (but We're Going to Anyway) by 14 countries, 42 women, each with a story no one has heard before. We all have questions about our bodies but often women's voices are silenced for being impolite or improper. This taboo-breaking book gives voice to the experiences of women from all walks of life, whose stories might not ordinarily be heard. These are the true stories of real women who are sharing the experiences they've always been told should be secret and shameful.
The Gene: An Intimate History by Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function.
Oryx & Crake by Snowman, once known as Jimmy, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human after powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride.
Stay With Me by Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood. It is a tale about the desperate attempts we make to save ourselves, and those we love, from heartbreak.
A Grief Observed by This intimate portait of bereavement and death recalls the author's experiences of the loss of his wife, as well as his evolving belief in God and his acceptance of a new life.
Grief Works by In Grief Works Samuel shares case studies from those who have experienced great love and great loss--and survived. She wants people to understand that grief is a process that has to be worked through, and the book shows if we do the work, we can begin to heal.
Grief Is Love by In Grief is Love, author Marisa Renee Lee reveals that healing does not mean moving on after losing a loved one - healing means learning to acknowledge and create space for your grief. It is about learning to love the one you lost with the same depth, passion, joy, and commitment you did when they were alive, perhaps even more.- Transcendent Kingdom by A gorgeously woven narrative about a woman trying to survive the grief of a brother lost to addiction and a mother trapped in depression while pursuing her ambitions.
Histories by Histories is a hypnotic fictional portrait of life in one hospital, over one week. In the corridors and consulting rooms, by the bedside, through the open curtain, we witness charged encounters within the emotional and physical world of medicine.
The Cancer Journals by Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
Illness by What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? And can there be well-being within illness?
The Salt Path by Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, through Devon and Cornwall.
The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness by A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.
An Uplifting Guide to LGBTQ+ Love, Life and Mental Health by In this empowering and uplifting book, award-winning podcaster Alexis Caught sets out to help queer and curious teenagers explore their LGBTQ+ identity and understanding. Alongside the author's personal experiences are first-hand stories from notable LGBTQ+ figures, providing a inclusive account of what it means to grow up queer.
Swollening by A tender debut poetry collection that examines the queer, sick body as a reaction to an ill world and asks it how to move on toward hope.
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Shilts asks: how was the AIDS epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? Extensively researched, weaving together the personal stories of those in the gay community and the medical and political establishments with political and social reporting, he exposes how AIDS was ignored, or denied, as a threat by many national institutions.- Detransition, Baby by A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.
Still Alice by A moving story of a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice Howland is proud of the life she's worked so hard to build. When she begins to grow forgetful and disoriented, she dismisses it for as long as she can until a tragic diagnosis changes her life - and her relationship with her family and the world around her - for ever. [Fiction]- Burnt Sugar by In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman - all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid's wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a mother who never seemed to care for her.
Somebody I Used to Know by What do you lose when you lose your memories? What do you value when this loss reframes how you've lived, and how you will live in the future? How do you conceive of love when you can no longer recognise those who are supposed to mean the most to you? When she was diagnosed with dementia at the age of fifty-eight, Wendy Mitchell was confronted with the most profound questions about life and identity.
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by As soon as Adam Kay set foot on a hospital ward for the first time, he realised there's quite a lot they don't teach you at medical school . . . His diaries from the NHS front line - scribbled in secret after long nights, endless days and missed weekends - are hilarious, horrifying and heart-breaking by turns. This Is Going to Hurt is everything you wanted to know about being a junior doctor, and more than a few things you really didn't.
Your Life in My Hands by How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life? In Your Life in My Hands, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline.
Seven Signs of Life: Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor by A brilliant, compelling account of what it is like to spend your days caring for patients "on the fringe of existence" as a doctor on an intensive care ward.
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Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor by Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet -- for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not.
Camouflage by Autism in women and girls is still not widely understood, and is often misrepresented or even overlooked. This graphic novel offers an engaging and accessible insight into the lives and minds of autistic women, using real-life case studies.
Our Autistic Lives by This is a varied and diverse collection of narratives from autistic adults aged from 20-70+, spanning different continents, genders, sexualities and ethnicities.
The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world – and The Mind’s Eye is testament to the myriad ways that we, as humans, are capable of rising to this challenge.
The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping by Samantha Harvey’s insomnia arrived, seemingly, from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She’s tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping. What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? For Samantha, extreme sleep deprivation resulted in a raw clarity about life itself. Original and profound, The Shapeless Unease is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and grief, and the will to survive.
Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. In this book, Professor Matthew Walker explores twenty years of cutting-edge research to solve the mystery of why sleep matters.
Go to Sleep by Full of the same hopes and dreams as any parent-to-be, Rachel soon realises that nothing about this new world is as she imagined. As the raw shock of sleep deprivation takes its toll on her and the truth begins to blur with the unreal, Rachel becomes consumed by one sole desire - to sleep. But how far will she go to get her baby to sleep?
The Family That Couldn't Sleep: Unravelling A Venetian Medical Mystery by Fatal Familial Insomnia is a rare, inherited disease that has afflicted one noble Venetian family for centuries, striking at random and passing from generation to generation like a deadly dynastic curse. The cause? A rogue protein called a prion, which is impossible to destroy. In this groundbreaking work of scientific detection, D. T. Max pins down this most mutable and maddening of enemies and tells a story that is at once enlightening and spell-binding.
The Iceberg by In 2008, Marion Coutts' husband Tom was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and told that he had under two years to live. The tumour was located in the area controlling speech and language, and would eventually rob him of the ability to speak. Tom was 53 when he died, leaving behind Marion and their two-year-old son Eugene. Coutts describes the eighteen months leading up to her partner's death; an account of a family unit under assault, and how the three of them fought to keep it intact.
Fall down 7 times, get up 8 : a young man's voice from the silence of autism by Naoki Higashida, a 13-year-old with non-verbal autism, shares his thoughts and feelings on a broad menu of topics ranging from school experiences to family relationships, the exhilaration of travel to the difficulties of speech.
The Flame Alphabet by The speech of children has mutated into a virus which is killing their parents. The Flame Alphabet asks the question: what is left of civilisation when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love?
Browse through all our books on surgery here, or take a look at some top picks below:
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by This is a stunningly well-written account of the life of a surgeon: what it is like to cut into people's bodies and the terrifying - literally life and death - decisions that have to be made. There are accounts of operations that go wrong; of doctors who go to the bad; why autopsies are necessary; and what it feels like to insert your knife into someone.
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine by At a time when surgery couldn't have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon. His insistence that germs were the source of all infection changed medicine forever. Fitzharris brilliantly conjures up the grisly world of Victorian surgery, and reveals how one of Britain's greatest medical minds finally brought centuries of savagery, sawing and gangrene to an end.
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes wrong? Do No Harm offers an unforgettable insight into the highs and lows of a life dedicated to operating on the human brain, in all its exquisite complexity.
Direct Red: A Surgeon's StoryGabriel Weston worked as a surgeon on the NHS frontlines; a woman in a world dominated by male egos. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary for survival. Startling and honest, her account combines a fierce sense of human dignity with compassion and insight, illuminating scenes of life and death the rest of us rarely glimpse.
The English patient by The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian village, Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories.The only clue Hana has to unlocking his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire - a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes detailing a tragic love affair.
Half of a yellow sun by Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.
War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.
Mental Health Awareness Month
Graphic Medicine
Graphic Medicine is a field that explores and supports the interaction between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare. The term was coined by doctor and author Ian Williams in 2007. You can scroll through our graphic novels on this page, or click the links below to find out more about the world of Graphic Medicine.
Wellcome Book Prize
- Wellcome Book Prize
For over a decade, the Wellcome Book Prize has celebrated and championed the best books illuminating some aspect of medicine, health or illness – and that in doing so bring new understanding to what it is to be human.
The Wellcome Book Prize boasts a Newcastle alumnus amongst its nominees - Dr Kathryn Mannix graduated from Newcastle Medical School in 1982. Her bestselling book 'With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well' was shortlisted in 2018.