Here are 100 books that Open House fans have personally recommended if you like
Open House.
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The stories I write are fiction, but I’ve heard hundreds of tales about survival, and family drama. I’m the secret-keeper everyone confides in. From the time I was a teen, friends shared their secrets with me. Later, as a healthcare worker, patients often told me shocking true-life stories. What started these events? How did the victims overcome the horrors? I found their tales fascinating. I invent characters that face nightmarish challenges, and they must use the tools they have to persevere. Just like in real life. My novels shed light on darker, twisted topics.
I found the chase in this book exhilarating. Francess, the main character, married the wrong man. When she and her child are constantly living in fear of a beating, she’s compelled to take her son and escape. With precise planning and help, she runs.
No longer able to work in her chosen field, nursing, she must accept a different job in a strange town while using a new identity. I was interested in seeing how she’d cope. She and her son must adjust to their unfamiliar life, while aware that her husband will never stop tracking them.
'The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old.'
For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son's face, Fran finally made a choice - she ran for both their lives.
Now she is starting over in a city far from home, far from Bobby. She uses a name that isn't hers, watches over her son, and tries to forget. For…
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…
I was raised in a loving but strict Catholic family in the 1970s, when girls like me were still expected to grow up to become traditional wives and mothers, rather than go to college and pursue a career. In a Pre-Cana class intended to prepare me and my fiancé for marriage (it didn’t work so well, as evidenced by our rancorous divorce twelve years later), I learned the concept of “family of origin,” and the profound impact a person’s upbringing has on them as an adult. I became fascinated by the psychic baggage each of us carries around, and how it affects our personal relationships and life choices.
I once lived in a close-knit neighborhood similar to the one in which this novel is set, and I was entranced by the interplay between the variety of characters in this tale of domestic suspense. The story isn’t so much about the woman who disappears one night as it is about the perplexed bunch of girlfriends who are left behind. I relished the voyeuristic peek into the hidden dramas of the various neighbors’ personal and family lives—it made me feel like I was riding a silent drone through the ’burbs, swooping unseen through kitchens, bedrooms, and backyards, uncovering people’s secrets!
"Full of slow-burning intrigue, Strawser's second novel will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies and Jennifer Kitses' Small Hours." —Booklist
*Book of the Month Club Selection
An innocent night of fun takes a shocking turn in Not That I Could Tell, the next page-turner from Jessica Strawser, author of Almost Missed You.
When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It’s a rare kid-free night, and they’re giddy…
I was raised in a loving but strict Catholic family in the 1970s, when girls like me were still expected to grow up to become traditional wives and mothers, rather than go to college and pursue a career. In a Pre-Cana class intended to prepare me and my fiancé for marriage (it didn’t work so well, as evidenced by our rancorous divorce twelve years later), I learned the concept of “family of origin,” and the profound impact a person’s upbringing has on them as an adult. I became fascinated by the psychic baggage each of us carries around, and how it affects our personal relationships and life choices.
The story of a flamingly narcissistic man plotting to betray his wife shouldn’t be funny at all, but Kaira Rouda definitely pulls it off with impressive skill and verve. Husband Paul is so insanely self-centered that I couldn’t stop laughing at the stream of inanities flying around in his egotistical brain as he drives his wife Mia to their lake house for what’s supposed to be the most memorable day of their lives. And is it ever, thanks to Mia’s moxie. You go, girl!
'[A] deliciously dark story shot through with black humour.' Sunday Mirror
A loving husband. The perfect killer?
'I wonder if Mia thinks I have a dark side. Most likely as far as she knows, I am just her dear loving husband.'
Paul Strom has spent years building his perfect life: glittering career, beautiful wife, two healthy boys and a big house in the suburbs.
But he also has his secrets. That's why Paul has promised his wife a romantic weekend getaway. He proclaims this day, a warm Friday in May, will be the best day ever.
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 was raised in a loving but strict Catholic family in the 1970s, when girls like me were still expected to grow up to become traditional wives and mothers, rather than go to college and pursue a career. In a Pre-Cana class intended to prepare me and my fiancé for marriage (it didn’t work so well, as evidenced by our rancorous divorce twelve years later), I learned the concept of “family of origin,” and the profound impact a person’s upbringing has on them as an adult. I became fascinated by the psychic baggage each of us carries around, and how it affects our personal relationships and life choices.
I was afraid this book might be too depressing at first, and kept yelling at the heroine, Barb, to quit feeling sorry for herself and do somethingalready to get her kids back from her domineering ex-husband. But the author’s wry voice drew me in, and this quirky novel is now one of my all-time favorites. Throughout the low times in my life, I’ve found humor to be the best tonic, and bumbling Barb delivers it here. I love how she rises above her seemingly hopeless circumstances by devising a highly questionable but totally kick-ass hilarious scheme to raise some quick cash and reunite with her children. The zany characters and spot-on descriptions of small-town life are guaranteed to boost your mood.
“I knew I could stay in this town when I found the blue enamel pot floating in the lake. The pot led me to the house, the house led me to the book, the book to the lawyer, the lawyer to the whorehouse, the whorehouse to science, and from science I joined the world.”
So begins Leslie Daniels’s funny and moving novel about a woman’s desperate attempt to rebuild her life. When Barb Barrett walks out on her loveless marriage she doesn’t realize she will lose everything: her home, her financial security, even her beloved children. Approaching forty with her…
I am a speaker, grief investigator, filmmaker, and voracious reader! Since the death of my eldest son, Harry, 23 years ago, I have become passionate about changing the landscape for people who have to face life and work when they are living with grief. Books on grief helped me enormously right from the start with Harry’s diagnosis when I was going through ‘living’ or ‘anticipatory grief’ and even more after Harry’s death. They could be fiction or factual; it didn’t matter. They offered me a translation, a guide for what I was going through, and gave me the courage to go forward as these authors were demonstrating.
This book gave me courage when I was at a low ebb.
Clover bravely describes the ferocity of her longing and grief over her mother following an accident. Her mother is alive but is not the person she knew and loved, more a toddler in an adult body. Clover takes flight as a teenager, and in her mission to understand her own shock and turmoil, she is drawn into challenging and sometimes dangerous situations with people, which she handles with fortitude.
I was left feeling that in the face of adversity, if we are brave and walk towards our grief, we can handle it eventually, bringing it forward into a new landscape (in Clover’s case, adulthood) and learning from it every step of the way.
'Extraordinary, and a painful but invigorating read. I've never met anyone who has read it and doesn't rank it as one of their favourite books.' Dolly Alderton
'This story - so fierce and brave and visceral and raw - will stay with me forever. Clover Stroud is a force of nature, and a woman who is fearless in the face of life and death. I loved it.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
'There is so much richly evoked life here... beautifully written.' Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times
Grief has been a part of my life since I was very young. My parents died 10 months apart when I was 11, then 12; my only sibling died when I was 20. Years later, after living through the grief of watching my marriage crumble and my 3 children struggle, my eldest son died at 20 in a single-car crash. Now, 26 years later, I read—and write—about navigating grief and uncertainty. I’m passionate about supporting those who grieve all manner of losses, including those that are spoken about and those often shrouded in silence. I hope you enjoy this book list as much as I have creating it.
Like many beautiful memoirs on grief and loss, Campbell tells the story of the catastrophic death of his two teenage children and the ways he and his wife lived through what seems unsurvivable.
But he doesn’t stop there, instead turning what he learned in his darkest times into a guide for grievers. Upending the common wisdom that “we all grieve differently,” he asserts that there are commonalities in grief that can serve as a guide for those walking through their most difficult days.
Finding the Words is organized into chapters addressing central issues in grief, including fear, pain, and guilt, but also community, ritual, and finally, meaning and purpose.
This is the book I wish I’d had when my grief was new. I’m grateful it's in the world.
A powerful account of one father’s journey through unimaginable grief, offering readers a new vision for how to more actively and fully mourn profound loss.
When Colin Campbell’s two teenage children were killed by a drunk driver, Campbell was thrown headlong into a grief so deep he felt he might lose his mind. He found much of the common wisdom about coping with loss—including the ideas that grieving is a private and mysterious process and that the pain is so great that “there are no words”—to be unhelpful. Drawing on what he learned from his own journey, Campbell offers an…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Allen Klein is a former hospice volunteer and the former director of The Life-Death Transitions Institute in San Francisco. He has also spoken at over 100 hospice events around the world. In addition, several of his books have dealt with death, dying, and grief. Among them are, The Healing Power of Humor, The Courage to Laugh, and Embracing Life after Loss. Klein’s interest in the connection between humor and death and dying came out of the death of his wife, who had a wonderful sense of humor. He saw how humor helped her, and those around her, cope with this challenging circumstance.
Experiencing a loss may feel overwhelming. That is why you need to read this comforting book; it can ease that feeling. Written by a Gestalt therapist, this book feels like the author is in the room with you helping you deal with your sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, and encouraging you to take part in life again after your loss.
Profound loss and disappointment are emotions that each of us will experience at some point in our lives. Loss is one of the most difficult experiences to come to terms with. The Courage to Grieve explores how we can deal with every kind of grief, revealing:
- How grief manifests itself in many ways, ranging from anguish, exhaustion, emptiness, resentment, longing, tension, confusion, sleeplessness and sometimes the temporary loss of the will to live. - How we can help ourselves and others to cope with the immediate experience of death and the grief and mourning period that follows. - How…
I’ve sat in many grief circles and listened to fellow grievers share their pain at being abandoned or misunderstood by their friends and families as they grieve. Often we suffer the secondary loss of community because our culture has not taught us how to grieve or how to be a friend to those in grief. My wife and I found some invaluable tools that helped us communicate our needs to our community, and keep them close on our grief journey. One of those tools is grief books. I’ve read dozens of them, and while everyone responds to grief books differently, I think these five books are the very best.
Devine does a wonderful job of validating our feelings and our needs as we grieve.
It is filled with many wonderful pieces of wisdom about grief. The most helpful insight she offered me was the distinction she drew between the healthy pain of grief versus the unnecessary and unhelpful suffering that so often accompanies grief.
She provides practical advice on how to be kind to ourselves as we grieve. We can’t “fix” our grief and loss, but we can be kind to ourselves on this difficult journey.
As seen in THE NEW YORK TIMES * READER'S DIGEST * SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH * HUFFPOST
Featured on NPR's RADIO TIMES and WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO
When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. "Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form," says Megan Devine. "It is a natural and sane response to loss."
So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible?
In It's OK That You're Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound…
Grief has been a part of my life since I was very young. My parents died 10 months apart when I was 11, then 12; my only sibling died when I was 20. Years later, after living through the grief of watching my marriage crumble and my 3 children struggle, my eldest son died at 20 in a single-car crash. Now, 26 years later, I read—and write—about navigating grief and uncertainty. I’m passionate about supporting those who grieve all manner of losses, including those that are spoken about and those often shrouded in silence. I hope you enjoy this book list as much as I have creating it.
I’ve admired Claire Bidwell Smith’s writing and work around grief for years, but only recently read Conscious Grieving, and I’m so glad I did.
Organized by Smith’s concept of “four orientations”—Entering, Engaging, Surrendering, and Transforming—this book gently walked me through ways in which we can consciously engage with our grief rather than experiencing it as something that’s happening to us.
Though my first experience with grief occurred nearly 60 years ago and the devastating loss of my son more than two decades ago, there’s no question that there are new losses ahead. Thanks to this resource, I feel far more prepared to walk through grief with intentionality and embrace a meaningful life as I do.
Smith’s summary of other grief models and list of tools make this book a must-have for me.
Conscious Grieving is a book for anyone seeking guidance and support after loss. Renowned grief therapist Claire Bidwell Smith combines her deeply personal experience of loss with her long career spent working with thousands of people to introduce a new approach to grief, one that promotes hope and even transformation.
What does it mean to grieve consciously? Most of the time, when we lose someone we love, it feels like grief is just happening to us. We feel out of control, and overwhelmed. Claire reminds us that while loss is something that inevitably happens to all of us, how we…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
When I had multiple miscarriages in my late 20’s, I found I had no idea how to handle my grief. I didn’t even recognize I was grieving. A few years later when my husband died I was thrust into grief and a life I had never wanted. It took me months to learn how to survive, and a lot longer to find the resources I needed to live a happy life despite my loss. Finding resources that would help became important to me, and a handful of books have stayed with me long after I read them. I hope these books help you as much as they helped me.
This book is the first one I read after losing my husband. I was 31-years old, with a toddler and a newborn, and I had no idea how I was going to survive the rest of my life, better yet make it a life worth living. In The Sun Still Rises: Surviving and Thriving After Grief and Loss, author Shawn Doyle shares his story of loss, but more than that he shares hope with his reader. Hope that there is still light in the darkness of grief. At that point in my loss, hope was what I needed most. However, he didn't stop there, he also provided practical tips and suggestions about dealing with both the logistical matters that come with loss, as well as providing emotional support. This book helped me live my best life, in spite of my loss.
Coping with the loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult and devastating challenge any of us face in our lifetime.
The grief you feel hurts more than physical pain.
And yet, somehow, life is still going on around you.
Is it even possible to survive, let alone thrive, after such grief and loss?
In this book, Shawn Doyle shares his heart-wrenching personal story of bereavement to supply you with the tools, tips, and techniques for dealing with loss and grief on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.
This is not a predictable five stages of grief book.…
