Editors Reads

Topic

Trauma

12 reading guides and book lists curated by the Editors Reads team.

12 posts

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Where to Start with Bessel van der Kolk: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Bessel van der Kolk — how to approach The Body Keeps the Score, his essential book on trauma. A complete reading guide to the trauma researcher.

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Where to Start with Gail Honeyman: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Gail Honeyman — how to approach Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, her essential debut novel. A complete reading guide.

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Where to Start with Jennette McCurdy: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Jennette McCurdy — how to approach I'm Glad My Mom Died, her essential memoir of childhood abuse and recovery. A complete reading guide.

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Where to Start with Laurie Halse Anderson: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Laurie Halse Anderson — how to approach Speak, her debut novel and landmark of YA literature about a ninth-grader rendered mute by an assault she cannot yet name, written in a fragmented first-person voice that mirrors trauma with precision. A complete reading guide.

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Where to Start with Rupi Kaur: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Rupi Kaur — whether to begin with milk and honey, the sun and her flowers, or home body. A complete reading guide to the bestselling poet.

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Where to Start with Stephen Chbosky: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Stephen Chbosky — how to approach The Perks of Being a Wallflower, his essential coming-of-age novel. A complete reading guide.

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Where to Start with Viola Davis: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Viola Davis — how to approach Finding Me, her essential memoir of poverty, trauma, shame, and extraordinary achievement. A complete reading guide.

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Best Books About Trauma and Survival: Fiction and Memoir

The best books about trauma and survival — from A Little Life and Beloved to The Body Keeps the Score and Shuggie Bain. Essential fiction and memoir.

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15 Books Like The Body Keeps the Score to Read Next

Finished The Body Keeps the Score? These 15 books on trauma, healing, resilience, and the relationship between mind and body continue the work of understanding how we carry our history.

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Books Like Beloved: Historical Fiction About Trauma, Memory, and Survival

Toni Morrison's ghost story about slavery's legacy is one of the most powerful novels ever written. These books share its confrontation with historical violence and its demand that the unthinkable be faced.

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Books Like A Little Life: 11 Novels That Devastate and Endure

If A Little Life's portrait of trauma and friendship left you gutted, these novels share its emotional ambition, literary depth, and unflinching honesty.

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Books Like The Kite Runner: 11 Novels About Guilt, Redemption, and the Weight of Home

If The Kite Runner moved you with its portrait of friendship, betrayal, and the long road back to something like peace, these novels explore the same territory.

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