Here are 100 books that Behind the Bars fans have personally recommended if you like
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I write romance novels that are as much about the characters learning to love themselves as they are about people falling in love with each other. While most of my books are romantic comedies, that doesn’t stop my characters from facing some of the darkest parts of themselves and coming out on the other side feeling sure of their own worth. I often explore mental health topics, and I love to see other romance authors de-stigmatizing things like therapy, medication, and reaching out for support. The romance novels I’ve included below cover a wide range of subjects, but they all handle mental health with care, respect, and hope.
Living has all the best ingredients for an epic slow-burn romance: a shocking first encounter, two very different heroines from completely different worlds, a beautiful friendship that unfolds with care and heartwarming tenderness, and a simmering layer of tense attraction that will keep you turning the pages as fast you can to see the burn finally burst into flames. It’s also a story that handles the topics of grief and depression with respect and a poignancy that makes this story difficult to forget. I love romances that focus on the growth of the individual characters as much as the development of their relationship with each other, and Living does a beautiful job at balancing both.
During her morning exercise, yoga instructor Cam Saunders finds herself rescuing a young woman who has walked into the sea, seemingly intent on taking her own life. When the woman in question turns out to be a famous actress, Cam promises to keep her secret safe.
Six months later, America’s sweetheart Ella Temperley is working hard to get her life back on track, grieving the loss of her twin sister and fighting a deep depression. Despite her fame, she feels alone in the world and keeps thinking of the woman she owes her life to.
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I write romance novels that are as much about the characters learning to love themselves as they are about people falling in love with each other. While most of my books are romantic comedies, that doesn’t stop my characters from facing some of the darkest parts of themselves and coming out on the other side feeling sure of their own worth. I often explore mental health topics, and I love to see other romance authors de-stigmatizing things like therapy, medication, and reaching out for support. The romance novels I’ve included below cover a wide range of subjects, but they all handle mental health with care, respect, and hope.
While the conversation around mental health still has a long way to go to be totally free of stigma, men’s mental health is especially in need of being more openly discussed without shame. When I read Some Sort of Happy, I was thrilled and grateful to find it features a hero struggling with anxiety and an OCD diagnosis. There is a lot of room for the romance genre to step up and show that the stereotypical view of what a ‘strong’ man looks like doesn’t line up with reality and that there are so many ways to be valid and worthy of love. Melanie Harlow does an amazing job at that in Some Sort of Happy, and she instantly became one of my favourite authors after I read this book.
I almost didn’t believe it was him. In high school, Sebastian Pryce had been an aloof outsider who kept to himself. But now, ten years, later he’s back and unusually attractive. With muscle in all the right places and hands that know exactly what they’re doing, Sebastian is everything I didn’t know I needed. And while he isn’t exactly friendly, he has a magnetism that draws me in. He pulls away, afraid he’ll break me. Until the night I demanded more—and he gave it. (Hard and deep. Twice.) Were we just two lost, lonely people seeking solace? Or could a…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
After some challenges with reading the dialect, I became so intrigued by this heart-wrenching story of two teenage girls, one Trinidadian and one African-American, who come together unexpectedly in cold Minneapolis. I loved learning about their cultures, and I loved how they grew close despite their differences and supported each other through the crises of lost family and childhood cancer.
The language and pace beguiled me as a reader. The girls' viewpoints of their past and present worlds were engaging. I felt the heroism in each of them, one facing death, one trying to reunite with her family.
Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus's bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.
Port of Spain, Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she's going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's daughter. Audre's grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I write romance novels that are as much about the characters learning to love themselves as they are about people falling in love with each other. While most of my books are romantic comedies, that doesn’t stop my characters from facing some of the darkest parts of themselves and coming out on the other side feeling sure of their own worth. I often explore mental health topics, and I love to see other romance authors de-stigmatizing things like therapy, medication, and reaching out for support. The romance novels I’ve included below cover a wide range of subjects, but they all handle mental health with care, respect, and hope.
No other author captures the joy, longing, confusion, love, and heartbreak of the first few years of adulthood the way Kandi Steiner does. They don’t call her the Queen of Angst for nothing, and in Weightless, she showcases some of her best new adult romance skills to craft a story about stumbling your way into being a grown-up while learning to love yourself as you fall in love with someone else. The heroine of Weightless also struggles with body image issues, and Kandi Steiner doesn’t shy away from exploring the harsh realities of the way society and even the people we trust can reinforce our deepest insecurities. This was one of the first romance novels I read, and it led me to an enduring love for and appreciation of Kandi Steiner’s work.
I remember I wanted to photograph them, the way the red and blue splashed across his cold, emotionless face. But I knew even if my feet could move from the place where they had cemented themselves to the ground and I could run for my camera, I wouldn’t be able to capture that moment.
I had trusted him, I had loved him, and even though my body had changed that summer, he’d made sure to help me hold on to who I was inside, regardless of how the exterior altered.
Everyone experiences stress, loss, grief, and disconnection in life. We often feel isolated and alone in our sorrow and pain. For many years, I’ve shared openly about my personal challenges, starting in 2003 with my Babyfruit blog about my multiple miscarriages to the speeches I’ve given around the world in the 90s, to several of the books I’ve written. Through storytelling, I try to turn my heartbreak into lessons—to turn my pain into tangible steps that can help others navigate hard things and feel less alone. Helping others is part of my healing process.
As adults, we don’t always realize how our childhood—and our parents—have played a major role in how we feel about ourselves and our relationships. This is not about blaming parents but realizing how we may not have learned important aspects of healthy relationships because of our upbringing.
This book sets out to help people free themselves from the effects of growing up with immature parents to heal deep wounds that have led to feelings of anger or fear of abandonment. With that newfound freedom comes the ability to create positive relationships with oneself and others.
Are you one of the countless people who grew up with emotionally immature parents? If you suffer from this troubling parent/child dynamic, you may still recall painful moments from your childhood when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of maturity in an effort to "compensate" for your parents' behavior. And while you likely cultivated strengths such as self-reliance and independence along the way- strengths that have served you well as an adult-having to be the emotionally mature person in your relationship with your parent is confusing and even…
I’m an Australian writer and journalist. I’ve written several humour books, as well as a history of Australia in the 1960 and 1970s called The Land Before Avocado. I also write for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Washington Post and present a radio show on ABC Radio Sydney. Of the books I’ve written, the one that’s closest to my heart is my memoir Flesh Wounds.
Rosie is one of Australia’s most compelling young writers. Her book came out at the same time as mine, so my wife read it straight after my book. Afterward, she picked up my book and said: “You really are just a middle-class whinger.” Ok, it was said with a smile, but she had a point. Rosie’s parents were so much worse than mine—jaw-droppingly awful—yet it’s brilliant how Rosie shrugs off any urge for self-pity.
Brutal, brave, hilarious - a full-frontal memoir about surviving the very worst that life can throw at you. Rosie Waterland has never been cool. Growing up in housing commission, Rosie was cursed with a near perfect, beautiful older sister who dressed like Mariah Carey on a Best & Less budget while Rosie was still struggling with various toilet mishaps. She soon realised that she was the Doug Pitt to her sister's Brad, and that cool was not going to be her currency in this life. But that was only one of the problems Rosie faced. With two addicts for parents,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I love writing about families and what makes them tick: the minor dramas being played out behind every front door, make for intriguing reading. As a journalist, I have interviewed so many people with fascinating stories to tell, and with my fiction I throw my characters into a tricky situation and see what unfolds. Inevitably, if you pull one playing card from the bottom, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. When faced with unexpected challenges, my characters often behave badly, make poor decisions and get themselves into the kind of mess that makes you want to read one more chapter before turning out the light at night.
Yet more dysfunctional families and tormented sibling relationships, but this book is funny as well as clever, and I loved the fractured relationships between Alice and Hanna, twins who have always been saint and sinner. Now the two women are adults, nothing has turned out as they expected in their lives and they struggle with each other as well as with their domineering mother and critical older brother. Some great family tension and well-written dialogue, and despite the subject matter, this isn’t a book that will leave you down-hearted.
A Times Best Fiction Book of the Year A Guardian Best Fiction Book of the Year A BBC Culture Book of the Year 'IT'LL EASILY BE ONE OF MY BOOKS OF THE YEAR' Hannah Beckerman
'It's a warm book and a touching one. And did I mention it's funny? Just read it. You'll see' The Times
'Funny, tender and sad' Sunday Express
'If you liked Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss, you'll love this novel' Good Housekeeping
'One of the richest explorations of family dysfunction I've read' the i newspaper
'Shades of Fleabag in this smart, funny drama' Mail on Sunday…
I’m a teacher with passion for history and writing realistic fiction. I published my two books when I was a teenager, and I currently work as a 6th-grade educator teaching writing. I love teaching and working with kids; it keeps me young. When I’m not teaching writing, I love to read realistic fiction, listen to or watch documentaries or horror podcasts, and write short stories.
I absolutely love this book. The main characters, two teenage girls, who are total opposites, develop a friendship based on peer counseling together. They learn from each other and give each other comfort, advice, and more help on how to resolve their problems. It’s a great insight into what goes on in young adults’ lives.
Overachiever Antonia is eager to participate in the new peer counselling programme at school - until she learns the person she's supposed to counsel is Jasmine Luther. Jazz is anything but Antonia's peer. She's a punk, a druggie, a gang hanger. But as their peer counselling sessions progress, Antonia and Jazz discover that they have more in common than they could ever have imagined. When Antonia's life begins to unravel, she finds Jazz may be her only aid. A poignant, darkly comic novel that challenges readers' definitions of what is 'normal'.
Lisa Bournelis is a transformation leader in healthcare, a new author, and TEDx speaker. Prior to this, she worked for the United Nations and NGOs in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Africa. Dealing with the unknown makes her passionate about promoting books that empower children to overcome anxiety.
As a mom to a child with a mental health diagnosis, she wanted to help children by writing an uplifting novella based on her son’s experiences with OCD during the pandemic. Her aim is for anxious and neurodiverse kids to see themselves as heroes of their own stories. A portion of the royalties from her book will be donated to pediatric OCD research.
The author is a mom and clinician herself and based on clinical best practices has written a lovely rhyming book to help young children deal with boundaries and bullies in a way that is accessible for younger readers.Ideal for school, daycare, and clinical settings.As a parent of an empathic child, I found this book an easy way to introduce the concepts of self-worth and appropriate relationships.If you have a child that is experiencing bullying or needs to set boundaries at school, then this book is an excellent addition to your library.
“Being aware of our feelings is a building block for our emotional and social intelligence. In this charming and creative book, Christina Furnival offers children a way to sense and shape their emotions that emerge in the important friendships that shape who we are now, and who we will become later on in our lives.” ―Daniel J. Siegel, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Developing Mind, Parenting from the Inside Out, and The Whole Brain Child
How can I help my child deal with a bully? What do I teach them about handling an on-again-off-again, not-so-friendly friend? My…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This is a topic that is very passionate for me since growing up in Toronto, and I never had any role models that look like me to look up to. I wanted to showcase powerful Asian women authors to show others what is possible and that we can also dismantle the negative stereotypes we still face. I want to be able to create better representation for Asian women in the media, and highlighting these amazing authors is a great way to showcase that.
This book has helped me learn to say that it's okay not to be okay and also be okay to ask for help when needed.
In Asian culture, when a problem arises we are told to never share our troubles and because of that we suffer in silence. There is no shame in seeking help or talking to a licensed mental health therapist. Help comes in many different forms and this book has helped me learn to be okay with talking about mental health.
A is for Authentic shines a spotlight on the mental health stigma in the Asian community. This book outlines the identity journey of a second-generation Korean American who is emboldened to share her perspective through a mental health lens as a practicing clinician. Her memoir is about bringing healing and instilling hope as a catalyst for impactful change in normalizing mental health and mental illness in the Asian community. The author embraces cultural confidence™ to bravely express the thoughts and emotions she uncovered over the years.
