Death Positive Library Book List
Death Positive Library Book List
We have also put together a wider book list around the topic. Please be aware that not all of these titles will be available as eBooks through Newcastle Libraries.
Author |
Title |
Death Positive Library Favourites |
|
| Andrews, Gary | Finding Joy (John Murray, 2020) |
| Godden, Salena | Mrs Death Misses Death (Cannongate books, 2021) |
| Kasket, Elaine | All the Ghosts in the Machine: The Digital Afterlife of your Personal Data (Robinson, 2019) |
| Mannix, Kathryn | With the End in Mind (Harper Collins, 2017) |
| Mayfield, Kate | The Undertaker's Daughter (Simon & Schuster, 2014) |
| Rothschild, Liz (editor) | Outside the Box: Everyday Stories of Death, Bereavement and Life (PCCS Books, 2020) |
| Toolis, Kevin | My Father's Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die (Orion, 2017) |
| Troyer, John | Technologies of the Human Corpse (MIT Press, 2020) |
Having Conversations About Death |
|
| Anastasios, Andrew | Dying to Know: Bringing Death to Life (Hardie Grant Publishing, 2010) |
| Brayne, Sue | The D Word: Talking about Dying: A Guide for Relatives, Friends and Carers (Continuum, 2010) |
| Fong, Jack | The Death Cafe Movement (Palgrave, 2017) |
| Grollman, Earl A | Talking about Death: A Dialogue Between Parent and Child (Beacon Press, 2011) |
| Hebb, Michael | Let's Talk about Death (over Dinner): The Essential Guide to Life's Most Important Conversation (Orion Spring, 2018) |
Writing Wills and Getting Things in Order |
|
| Aiyela, Remi | Making a Will: An essential guide to creating the perfect will for your circumstances (Independently published, 2018) |
| Beckerman, Debbie (ed); Feinman, Jane; Peterson, Clive; & 3 more | How to Have a Good Death (DK, 2006) |
| Byron, Patricia C | Last Orders: The Essential Guide to Your Letter of Wishes (Stellar Books, 2010) |
| Bryon, Patricia C | The Good Will Guide (Stellar Books Publishing, 2012) |
| Magnusson, Margareta | The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (Canongate Books, 2017) |
Self-Help and Grief |
|
| 50minutes.com | 'Coping with Bereavement: A practical guide to getting through grief' (50Minutes.com, 2017) |
| Albom, Mitch | The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Little, Brown Book Group, 2004) |
| Andrews, Gary | Finding Joy (John Murray, 2020) |
| Bates, Sasha | Languages of Loss: a psychotherapist's journey through grief (Yellow Kite, 2021) |
| Bonanno, George A | The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us about Life After Loss (Basic Books, 2009) |
| Dass, Ram and Bush, Mirabai | Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Love and Dying )2018) |
| Devine, Megan | It's OK that you're not OK: Meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn't understand (Sounds True, 2017) |
| Dolny, Helena | Before forever after: when conversations about living meet questions about dying (2018) |
| Edelman, Hope | The AfterGrief: finding your way on the long path of grief (Michael Joseph, 2021) |
| Gehlek, Rimpoche Nawang | Good Life, Good Death: Tibetan wisdom on reincarnation (Riverhead Hardcover, 2001) |
| Giddings, Philip; Down, Martin; Sugden, Elaine; Tuckwell, Gareth | Talking about dying: help in facing death & dying (2016) |
| Glenn, Amy Wright | Holding Space: on loving, dying and letting go (Parallax Press, 2017) |
| Halifax, Joan | Being with dying: cultivating compassion and fearlessness in the presence of death (2008) |
| Hartley, Gill | Aspects of loss: A companion for bereaved parents and their families (Moorley's Print & Publishing, 2011) |
| Holloway, Richard | Waiting for the last bus: Reflections on life and death (Canongate Books, 2018) |
| Kessler, David | Finding meaning: The sixth stage of grief (Ebury Publishing, 2019) |
| Khyentse, Dzongsar Jamyang | Living is dying: How to prepare for death, dying and beyond (2020) |
| Kirkpatrick, Roger (ed) | Fina chapters: writings about the end of life (Jessica Kingsley Pub, revised 2014) |
| Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth | Questions and answers on death and dying (Simon & Schuster, 1997) |
| Leimbach, Claire, Trypheyna McShane and Zenith Virago | The intimacy of death and dying: simple guidance to help you through (2009) |
| Mayer, Catherine and Bird, Anne Mayer | Good Grief: Embracing life at a time of death (HarperCollins Publishers, 2020) |
| McKissock, Diane | Coping with grief (HarperCollins Publishers, 4th edition, 2015) |
| Miller, BJ and Berger, Shoshana | A Beginner's guide to the end: How to live life to the full and die a good death (2019) |
| Neuberger, Julia | Dying Well: A guide to enabling a good death (CRC Press, 2016) |
| Nuland, Sherwin | How we die (Vintage, 1997) |
| Petch, Sally | Death Matters (Matador, 2013) |
| Rice, Margaret | A good death (2019) |
| Robertson, Ray | How to die: A book about being alive (Biblioasis, 2020) |
| Rolls, Antonia | As mother lay dying: A tapestry woven of memories and insights from the beside (Antonia Rolls, 2021) |
| Rosenfeld, Juliet | The state of disbelief: A story of death, love and forgetting (Short Books Ltd, 2020) |
| Rothschild, Liz (ed) | Outside the box: Everyday stories of death, bereavement and life (PCCS Books, 2020) |
| Samuel, Julia | Grief works: stories of life, death and surviving (2017) |
| Shepherd, Grace | Living with dying (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010) |
| Taee, Katrina and McNicoll, Wendelien | Surviving the tsunami of grief: for the bereaved and those wanting to support them (New Act Publishing, 2019) |
| Tisdale, Sallie | Advice for the dying (and those who love them): A practical perspective on death (2018) |
| Warner, Felicity | A safe journey home: A simple guide to achieving a peaceful death (2011) |
| Wyatt, John | Dying Well: Dying faithfully (2018) |
| Yalom, Irvin | Staring at the sun: being at peace with your own mortality: overcoming the dread of death (Piatkus, 2011) |
Funerals and Memorialisation |
|
| Francis, Jean | Time to go: Practical celebrations for the final milestone - alternative British funerals (iUniverse.com, 2004) |
| Franics, Jean | Finishing touches: 60+ ways to enrich a funeral (The Milestone Publishing Company, 2011) |
| Gordon-Lennox, Jeltje | Crafting meaningful funeral rituals: A practical guide (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) |
| Jones, Sarah | Funerals your way: A person-centred approach to planning a funeral (independently published, 2018) |
| Martin Richard | Celebrating the life of a loved one: what to do with their ashes (2015?) |
| Speyer, Josefine; Wienrich, Stephanie & The Natural Death Centre | The Natural death handbook (Ebury Press; 3rd edition, 2003) |
Behind the Scenes at the Funeral Directors |
|
| Doughty, Caitlin | Smoke gets in your eyes (Canongate, 2015) |
| Doughty, Caitlin | Will my cat eat my eyeballs?: And other questions about dead bodies (Orion Publishing Co, 2020) |
| Lynch, Thomas | The undertaking (Vintage, 1998) |
| McKenzie, Kenneth & Harra, Todd | Mortuary Confidential: undertakers spill the dirt (Citadel; Reissue edition, 2018) |
| Valentine, Carla | Past Mortems: life and death behind mortuary doors (Sphere, 2017) |
| Wilde, Caleb | Confessions of a funeral director: how the business of death saved my life (HarperCollins, 2018) |
Children |
|
| Awbery, Stephanie | My daddy had cancer (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015) |
| Becker, Aaron | A stone for Sascha (Walker Books, 2018) |
| Brown, Laurie Drasny and Brown, Marc | When dinosaurs die: A guide to understanding death (Little, Brown & Company, 2004) |
| Bruna, Dick | Dear Grandma Bunny: A Miffy book (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2018) |
| Coelho, Joseph and Colpoys, Allison | If all the world were...(Lincoln Children's Books, 2018) |
| Davies, Benji | Grandad's Island (Simon & Schuster Children's UK, 2015) |
| Dieckmann, Sandra | Waiting for wolf (Hachette Children's Group, 2020) |
| Doughty, Caitlin | Will my cat eat my eyeballs?: And other questions about dead bodies (Orion Publishing Co, 2020) |
| Gaines, Arlen Grad and Polsky, Meredith Englander | I have a question about death: A book for children with autism spectrum disorder or other special needs (2017) |
| Grollman, Earl A | Talking about death: A dialogue between parent and child (Beacon Press, 2011) |
| Hewitt, Dawn | When someone dies (questions and feelings about, 2018) |
| Jeffers, Oliver | The heart and the bottle (Philomel Books, 2010) |
| Kerr, Judith | Goodbye Mog (Harper Collins Children's Books, 2003) |
| Lee, Carol | Remembering Hare: The great race (Southgate Publishers, 2014) |
| Hewitt, Dawn | When someone dies (Questions and Feelings About) (2018) |
| Lee, Carol | Saying Goodbye to Hare: a story about death and dying for children aged 5-9 years (Southgate Publishers, 2012) |
| Lee, Carol | Remembering Hare: The Great Race (Southgate Publishers, 2014) |
| Lemon, Mark | The magical wood (Lemon Drop Books, 2018) |
| Moth | 'Goodbye, Mr Jim', www.moth.org.uk/Goodbye-Box |
| Perkin, Jayde | Mum's Jumper (Book Island, 2019) |
| Potter, Molly | Let's talk about when someone dies (2018) |
| Robinson, Hilary | The Copper Tree: helping a child cope with death and loss (Strauss House Productions, 2012) |
| Rosen, Michael | Michael Rosen's Sad book (Walker Books, 2011) |
| Teckentrup, Britta | The Memory tree (2013) |
| Thomas, Isabel and Egneus, Daniel | Fox: A circle of life story (Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2020) |
| Varley, Susan | Badger's parting gifts (1984) plus online |
Books for people with learning disabilities |
|
| easyhealth.org.uk | When I die: The choices that Tony has made for the end of his life 9free downloadable booklet) |
| Hollins, Sheila and Tuffrey-Wijne, Irene | Am I going to die? (Beyond Words, 2009) |
| Marie Curie | Feelings you might have when someone dies: a new booklet on grief for people with learning disabilities (2019) |
Older Children |
|
| Callender, Kacen | King and the dragonflies (Scholastic, 2020) |
| DiCamillo, Kate | The tiger rising (Walker Books Ltd, 2014) |
| Newbery, Linda | Lob (Penguin Random House Children's UK, 2014) |
| Welford, Ross | The 1,000-year-old boy (Harper Collins, 2018) |
| White, E.B | Charlotte's Web (Puffin, 2016) |
| Wilson, Jacqueline and Sharratt, Nick | The cat mummy (Penguin Random House Children's UK, 2009) |
Young Adult |
|
| Dellaira, Ava | Love letters to the dead (Hot Key Books, 2014) |
| Erlbruch, Wolf | Death, duck and the tulip (2007) plus video online |
| Gaiman, Neil | The Graveyard book (2008) |
| Green, John | The fault in our stars (Penguin Random House Children's UK, 2014) |
| Ness, Patrick and Dowd, Siobhan | A monster calls (Walker Books Ltd, 2015) |
| Paterson, Katherine | Bridge to Terabithia (1977) |
| Silvera, Adam | History is all you left me (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2017) |
| Silvera, Adam | They both die at the end (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2017) |
Classic Literature |
|
| Anon | Beowulf (10th - 11th c) |
| Bronte, Emily | Wuthering Heights (1848) |
| Dickinson, Emily | Complete poems (Faber, 2016) |
| Hill, Susan | The woman in black (1998) |
| Le Fanu, Sheridan | Carmilla (1872) |
| Lewis, C.S | A grief observed (Reader's Edition) (Faber & Faber, 2015) |
| Poe, Edgar Allan | The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin, 2006) |
| Shakespeare, William | Hamlet: the revised edition ed. Neil Taylor and Ann Thompson (Arden, 2016) |
| Shelley, Mary | Frankenstein (1818: Penguin, ed Maurice Hindle, 2003) |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | The body snatcher (1884) |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | The suicide club (1878) |
| Stoker, Bram | Dracula (1897: Penguin, 2003) |
| Tennyson, Alfred Lord | In memoriam ed. Erik Gray (Norton, 2020) |
| Thomas Ligotti | Death poems (2014) |
| Walters, Julia | Poems and readings for funerals (Penguin, 2004) |
Modern Literature |
|
| Adam, Claire | Golden child (2019) |
| Barnes, Julian | Levels of life (Vintage Publishing, 2014) |
| Beecher, Anne | Here comes the miracle (2021) |
| Godden, Salena | Mrs Death, misses death (Canongate Books, 2021) |
| Goode, Chris | User not found (Oberon, 2018) |
| Haig, Matt | The midnight library (2020) |
| Highsmith, Patricia | The talented Mr Ripley (1955) |
| Hopkins, Cathy | The kicking the bucket list (HarperCollins Publishers, 2017) |
| Hurley, Andrew Michael | Starve Acre (John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2019) |
| Kis, Danilo | The encyclopaedia of the dead (Penguin, 2015) |
| Kurkov, Andrey | Death and the penguin (1996; trans: English 2001) |
| Kurkov, Andrey | Penguin lost (2005; trans: English 2010) |
| Mackintosh, Clare | After the end (Little, Brown Book Group, 2020) |
| Mantel, Hilary | The Giant, O'Brien (1998) |
| McEvoy, Mel | An emptied space (Mudfog, 2012) (poetry) |
| Morrison, Toni | Beloved (Vintage Publishing, 2010) |
| O'Farrell, Maggie | Hamnet (2020) |
| Plath, Sylvia | Collected poems (Faber, 1981) |
| Plath, Sylvia | The Bell Jar (1963) |
| Porter Max | Grief is the thing with feathers (Faber & Faber, 2015) |
| Pratchett, Terry | Hogfather (1996) |
| Pratchett, Terry | Mort (1987) |
| Pratchett, Terry | Reaper Man (1991) |
| Pratchett, Terry | Soul Music (1994) |
| Pratchett, Terry | Thief of Time (2001) |
| Rayner, Sarah | One moment, one morning (Pan Macmillan, 2010) |
| Saunders, George | Lincoln in the Bardo: a novel (Penguin Random House USA, 2017) |
| Spark, Muriel | Memento Mori (Macmillan, 1959) |
| Zusak, Marcus | The Book Thief (2005) |
Sci-Fi/Fantasy |
|
| Banks, Iain M | Surface Detail (2010) |
| Brockmeier, Kevin | The Brief history of the dead (2006) |
| Dick, Philip K | A maze of death (1970) |
| Dick, Philip K | Ubik (1969) |
| Farmer, Philip Jose | To your scattered bodies go (1971) |
| Gibson, William | Neuromancer (1984) |
| Golding, William | Lord of the flies (1954) |
| Ishiguro, Kazuo | Never let me go (2005) |
| Ishiguro, Kazuo | Klara and the sun (2021) |
| James, Marlon | A brief history of seven killings (2014) |
| Le Guin, Ursula K | The books of Earthsea: The complete illustrated edition (2018) |
| Lem, Stanislaw | The Investigation (1959) |
| Morgan, Richard K | Altered carbon (2002) |
| Morgan, Richard K | Woken furies (2005) |
| Morgan, Richard K | Broken angels (2003) |
| Sawyer, Robert J | The terminal experiment (1995) |
| Squalia, Gabrielle | Dead boys (2015) |
| Vesaas, Tarjei and Rokkan, Elizageth (transf) | The Ice palace (Penguin, 2018) |
| Yolen, Jane | Cards of grief (1984) |
Memoirs |
|
| Barthes, Roland | Mourning diary (2009) |
| Black, Sue | All that remains: A life in death (Doubleday, 2018) |
| Black, Sue | Written in bone: hidden stories in what we leave behind (Doubleday, 2020) |
| Clarke, Rachel | Dear life: A doctor's story of love and loss (Little Brown, 2020) |
| Doughty, Caitlin | From here to eternity (Norton, 2018) |
| Doughty, Caitlin | Smoke gets in your eyes (Canongate, 2015) |
| Fitzpatrick, Niamh | Tell me the truth about loss: A psychologist's personal story of loss, grief and finding hope (Gill, 2020) |
| Haig, Matt | Reasons to stay alive (2015) |
| Lynch, Thomas | The Undertaking (Vintage, 1998) |
| Lyons, Anna and Winters, Louise | We all know how this ends: lessons about life and living from working with death and dying (Green Tree, 2021) |
| Macdonald, Helen | H is for Hawk (Jonathan Cape, 2014) |
| Mannix, Kathryn | With the end in mind (Harper Collins, 2017) |
| Mayfield, Kate | The Undertaker's daughter (Simon & Schuster, 2014) |
| McKenzie, Kenneth & Harra, Todd | Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers spill the dirt (Citadel; Reissue edition, 2018) |
| Melinek, Judy and Mitchell, T.J | Working Stiff: Two years, 262 bodies and the making of a medical examiner (Scribner, 2014) |
| O'Mahony, Seamus | The way we die now (Head of Zeus, 2017) |
| Praske and Nina | Love in the present tense: A bereaved Mum's story (2020) |
| Riley, Denise | Time lived, without its flow (Picador, 2019) |
| Roach, Mary | Stiff (Penguin, 2003) |
| Rogers, Jane Duncan | Gifted by grief (Wild Wisdom Ltd, 2015) |
| Taylor, Cory | Dying: A memoir (Canongate, 2016) |
| Toolis, Kevin | My father's wake: how the Irish teach us to live, love and die (Orion, 2017) |
| Valentine, Carla | Past Mortems: Life and death behind mortuary doors (Sphere, 2017) |
| Wilde, Caleb | Confessions of a funeral director: how the business of death saved my life (HarperCollins, 2018) |
Death, History and Culture |
|
| Anon | The Egyptian book of the dead, ed John Romer (Penguin Classics, 2008) |
| Appignanesi, Lisa | Everyday madness: On grief, anger, loss and love (Fourth Estate, 2018) |
| Aries, Philippe | The hour of our death (Vantage, 2008) |
| Baudrillard, Jean | Symbolic exchange and death (Sage, 2017) |
| Becker, Ernest | The denial of death (Free Press, 1973) |
| Bradbury, Jennie and Scarre, Chris | Engaging with the dead (Oxbow, 2017) |
| Buist, Erica | This Party's Dead: Grief, joy and spilled rum at the world's death festivals (Unbound, 2021) |
| Colquhoun, Matt | Egress: On mourning, melancholy and Mark Fisher (Repeater, 2020) |
| Crowe, Dan (ed) | Dead Interviews (Granta, 2013) |
| Davies, Douglas | Mors Britannica: Lifestyle & death-style in Britain today (OUP, 2015) |
| Dickey, Colin | Cranioklepty (Unbridled Books, 2000) |
| Fenwick, Peter and Fenwick, Elizabeth | The art of dying (Continuum, 2008) |
| Fisher, Mark | Ghosts of my life (Zero Books, 2013) |
| Fong, Jack | The death of cafe movement (Palgrave, 2017) |
| Freud, Sigmund | 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1918) |
| Fuss, Diana | Dying Modern: A meditation on elegy (Duke UP, 2013) |
| Gawande, Atul | Being Mortal: illness, medicine and what matters in the end (Profile Books Ltd, 2015) |
| Hallam, Elizabeth and Hockey, Jenny | Death, memory and material culture (Berg, 2001) |
| Holmberg, Tora, Jonsson, Annika and Palm, Fredrik | Death Matters: Cultural sociology of mortal life (Palgrave, 2019) |
| Jupp, Peter C and Gittings, Clare | Death in England: An illustrated history (Manchester UP, 1999) |
| Kasket, Elaine | All the ghosts in the machine: The digital afterlife of your personal data (Robinson, 2019) |
| Kellehear, Alan | A social history of dying (CUP, 2007) |
| Klass, Dennis and Steffen, Edith Maria | Continuing bonds in bereavement (Routledge, 2018) |
| Klass, Dennis, Silverman, Phyllis R and Nickman, Steven L | Continuing Bonds: New understandings of grief (Routledge, 1996) |
| McIIwain, Charlton | When death goes pop (Peter Lange, 2005) |
| Penfold-Mounce, Ruth | Death, the dead and popular culture (Emerald, 2018) |
| Prodromou, Amy-Katerini | Navigating loss in women's contemporary memoir (Palgrave, 2015) |
| Sheeran, Pat and Witoszek, Nina | Talking to the dead: A study of Irish funerary traditions (Rodopi, 1998) |
| Sontag, Susan | Regarding the pain of others (Penguin, 2003) |
| Stanford Peter | How to read a graveyard (Bloomsbury, 2013) |
| Stokes, Patrick | Digital Souls: a philosophy of online death (Bloombury Academic, 2021) |
| Strange, Julie-Marie | Death, grief and poverty, 1870-1914 (CUP, 2005) |
| Teodorescu, Adriana and Jacobsen, Michael | Death in contemporary popular culture (Routledge, 2020) |
| Troyer, John | Technologies of the human corpse (MIT Press, 2020) |
Cards |
|
| Grave talks | Creating space to talk about death, dying and funerals |
| Karuna cards | Creative ideas to transform grief and difficult like transitions |
Films |
|
| A Love that never dies | Jane Harris & Jimmy Edmonds, The Good Grief Project |
| Beyond the mask | The Good Grief Project |
Podcasts |
|
| General end of life | The art of dying well, Death in the afternoons, Dying matters, Let's talk death, When you die |
| Grief & loss | Good grief, Grief cast, Terrible, thanks for asking, Bereavement room |
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