Illness Fiction

Fall in love with Perfectly Hopeless—a poignant and breathtaking young adult romance about borrowed hearts, fleeting moments, and the courage to love, even when it feels impossible. What if the person who made you believe in love was already running out of time? Under the summer willows, Maven never expected to find Henri—a boy with a borrowed heart and a fading future. Henri never planned to let anyone in—not when he’d already made peace with his fate. Their days together are stolen, beautiful, and bittersweet. As Henri refuses the transplant that could save him, Maven clings to ...

Beautiful and magnetic, Catherine, a.k.a. “Maman,” smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard, and loves too extravagantly, and her daughter Violaine wouldn’t have it any other way. But when Maman is hospitalized after a third divorce and a breakdown, everything changes. As the story of Catherine’s own traumatic childhood and adolescence unfolds, the pieces come together to form an indelible portrait of a mother as irresistible as she is impossible, as triumphant as she is transgressive.

Seventeen-year-old Katie Price has a rare disease that makes exposure to even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Confined to her house during the day, her company is limited to her widowed father and her best friend. It isn't until after nightfall that Katie's world opens up, when she takes her guitar to the local train station and plays for the people coming and going. Charlie Reed is a former all-star athlete at a crossroads in his life - and the boy Katie has secretly admired from afar for years. When he happens upon her playing guitar one night, fate intervenes and the two embark on a star-crossed romance.

"Unique and beautifully done...an enriching experience from beginning to end - deep, emotional, and moving." -Sacha T. Y. Fortuné, Discovery Book Review "[Nercessian] is so skilled at creating characters vulnerable and real that we can feel their pain and deeply-set regret...a truly satisfying journey" - Madeline Barbush, Independent Book Review From the author of The Dowry, My Name Was Susan O'Malley follows four college friends into their 60s as they navigate complicated and tragic relationships. When the brother of Tom's first love and Mag's best friend, Susan O' Malley, brings fresh ...

What if finding her means losing himself? Seventeen-year-old Bo has always had delusions that he could travel through time. When he was 10, Bo claimed to have witnessed the Titanic hit an iceberg, and at 15, he found himself on a Civil War battlefield, horrified by the bodies surrounding him. So when his concerned parents send him to a school for troubled youth, Bo assumes he knows the truth: that he's actually attending Berkshire Academy, a school for kids who, like Bo, have "superpowers".

Jessica McMillian and Jeremy Travino are a perfect couple. But now Jessica has been diagnosed as having kidney failure. She is on dialysis three days a week and is so depressed that she's not sure she wants to live. Her one hope for a normal life is a kidney transplant, but she's an only child and her parents aren't suitable donors. Jeremy is determined to donate one of her kidneys to her, but his parents are terrified of losing their only child. Will Jeremy find the strength to go against his parents' wishes and do what he must to save Jessica?

In first grade, twins Alexis and Adam wrote down what they wanted to be when they grew up and put it in their teacher’s time capsule. Now entering their senior year in high school, they are surprised to find out what they wrote: Alexis wanted to "help people" and Adam wanted to be a fireman. But that was before Adam got sick and their family fell apart. Adam’s leukemia is now in remission but, sadly, so is the twins’ family. Their mother and father are always working - not only don’t they have time for Alexis and Adam, they don’t have time for each other. Alexis can’t even convince them to take a weekend off for one last family vacation to Disney World.

What would you do if the sun became your enemy? That’s exactly what happens to Viola Li after she returns from a trip abroad and develops a sudden and extreme case of photosensitivity — an inexplicable allergy to sunlight. Thanks to her crisis-manager parents, she doesn’t just have to wear layers of clothes and a hat the size of a spaceship. She has to stay away from all hint of light. Say goodbye to windows and running outdoors. Even her phone becomes a threat when its screen burns her.

Walking through life, I have experienced the high of highs and the low of lows. I have fallen in love and I have been heartbroken, I have experienced life and grief has knocked at my door. I am happy but there are days I am sad. I love life but there are days I just don’t. Negative thoughts are monsters I slay each day. We all go through the same emotions as humans. I took to writing just to cope and I hope as you read, these words will help you cope too. I am learning to live each day as it comes. These are just my thoughts into words.

Her mood swings drove away her would-be husband. Can she slow life down before she’s left behind? Maggie Hovis battles herself daily. Scrambling to pick up the pieces after something possesses her to pelt a shoe at her fiancé, the law student quickly takes up the suggestion to see a therapist. But she’s crushed when she receives a stigmatizing Bipolar II diagnosis and fears her shot at normal just died. Now saddled with a label and terrified she’ll end up like her institutionalized great aunt, Maggie delves into her family’s storied history of mental illness. And with tensions at a...

Maxine and Jonah meet in the canned goods aisle just as California is going into lockdown. Max’s part-time job as a personal grocery shopper is about to transform into a hellish gauntlet. Jonah’s preexisting anxiety is about to become an epic daily struggle. As Max and Jonah get to know each other through FaceTime dates, socially distanced playground hangs, and the escalating heartbreaks of the pandemic, they’re pushed apart by what they don’t share and pulled closer by what they do.

Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist who lacks money. By chance, Kate befriends Milly, an American heiress, and learns she is suffering from a fatal illness. Kate devises a scheme to maximize their combined assets: she encourages Merton to take an interest in Milly and marry her. Kate intends to make him a rich widower whom she herself can marry. But such well-laid plans are not enough for the subtlety of the heart.

Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job - restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes. Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe.

Kate McAllister is desperate for a change. Something to hit refresh and erase the pain of her mother leaving town without her. So when a group of popular girls folds Kate into their clique, it feels like the answer to all her problems - even if it means ditching Haddie, her childhood bestie. But when Kate’s new friends decide that Haddie is their next target, Kate becomes a passive participant in a cruel incident that could have killed Haddie...had Kate not stepped in, at the last minute, and saved her.

The first time Dieter Schmidt meets Mad Maggie is at a blockade on a logging road. He’s there to threaten the local First Nations band with court action if they don’t allow his client’s heavy equipment access to Deadman’s Island. Maggie emerges from the forest, but rather than chastise the lawyer for his part in trying to replace this unique ecosystem of magnificent old-growth trees with a housing development, she gives him an ultimatum. She will cure his yet-to-be-diagnosed terminal cancer if he saves the trees. Dieter dismisses Maggie's prediction as the delusions of someone ...

A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins this powerful debut, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths, and a budding relationship with a seminarian. In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another, from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death.

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her.

A wealthy man with a critically ill wife seeks the help of Matthew Hiller, a gifted doctor with a thriving practice. But in addition to the difficult professional challenge, Matthew finds himself facing the toughest emotional crisis of his life, since he met the lovely patient, Silvia, years ago, when both were young doctors healing the sick in Africa.

Jonah thinks his life is finally back on track when he agrees to stay in the Amish faith and plans to marry his love, Mary Lou. The bliss is short-lived because Mary Lou falls into a coma. While waiting for Mary Lou to awaken, Jonah tries to make amends with his past and prepare for the future. Jonah enlists the help of his childhood best friend, Samuel, to build Mary Lou’s dream house. Samuel convinces his younger sister, Catherine, who’s now all grown up, to help as well. Will Mary Lou wake from her coma? Will Catherine’s presence distract Jonah? Does God have other plans? This is ...

Do you find it hard to fall asleep each night? Is it so bad that you actually don’t look forward to going to bed each night? Do you spend hours frustrated because you can't stop anxious thoughts from running through your head? You need to find a way to unwind from the world. Project Sleep was created for people who need help finding sleep and staying asleep. These are bedtime stories for adults. You deserve peaceful deep and satisfying sleep.