We’ve pulled together a list of brain tumour book titles that we think might be helpful. These books could be useful to anyone living with a brain tumour, having lost someone to the devastating disease, or understanding the challenges facing those who work in front line of treatments.
Newly added:
When Nicola Nuttall was told that her 18-year-old daughter Laura had only 12 months to live, following a diagnosis of the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, she couldn’t begin to process her emotions. It was her greatest fear come true.
But while her mother struggled to adjust and searched for new treatments, Laura made a decision: she would live her life to the full and embark on an extraordinary bucket list.
Meeting Michelle Obama, piloting a Royal Navy ship, sky diving, going on safari in South Africa, driving monster trucks, taking tea at the Ritz, dancing on stage in front of thousands and graduating from university were just some of the many adventures Laura undertook.
The Stars Will Still Be There is Nicola’s raw but beautifully written account of helping her daughter make the most of her remaining time, while dealing with her own pain along with that of her younger daughter Gracie and husband, Mark.
Picture Me: My 3 and me by Anna Binks
Anna Binks was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2010 after blood tests revealed high prolactin levels. The scan found a suspected low-grade glioma which doctors were happy to monitor with regular scans. Ten years later, when she started suffering from headaches and dizzy spells, Anna had another scan which found she had a diffuse astrocytoma, and she was given a prognosis of three to five years.
Picture Me: My 3 and me is part fact, part fiction. It tells the story of Anna trying to navigate life with an incurable brain tumour, while manifesting living long enough to see her two children grow into adults. The book also includes practical and treatment-related information which may be of use to other cancer patients and their loved ones.
Choosing to Float by Clare Campbell-Cooper
A week after falling pregnant with her first child, following years trying to conceive, Clare Campbell-Cooper found herself in a sterile room listening to a doctor tell her 26-year-old husband he had a brain tumour. In that moment, her life changed forever.
In Choosing to Float, Clare tells the incredibly moving story of a young family learning to cope with a brain tumour diagnosis. With raw honesty, she shares the journey that followed – from the challenge of adjusting to motherhood as her husband underwent brain surgery and the fear that her newborn son would never know his father, to transitioning from a wife to a carer and grieving the man she loved, as the tumour changed him before her eyes.
David defied the odds. He died during COVID, just before his fortieth birthday. He had 12 years with his son. With compassion and humour, Clare shares the story of the end of David’s life – from the agonising worry of not being permitted to be with David in hospital during COVID to the beautiful small moments they shared together at home in Devon in his final months.
Finding the Rainbow: The Other Side of a Cancer Journey by LeeAnn Tripp
In 2014, LeeAnn Tripp was diagnosed with an inoperable cancerous brain tumour. Despite being given a prognosis of “maybe a couple of years”, she achieved remission after radiation treatment. But re-entering the world post-cancer was not the victorious, blasted-confetti-across-the-stage feeling she expected. Yearning for the days when she could fall asleep without a cocktail of antidepressants and anxiety meds, as well as the community of cheerleaders who had rallied around her, LeeAnn looked to start her life over. But how?
In this short memoir, LeeAnn shares her unexpected cancer survival journey and the lessons she learned along the way, to provide hope to others affected.
Mummy Has A Lump by Simone Baldwin
Simone Baldwin was diagnosed with a brain tumour when her son was just six years old and struggled to know how to tell him about her diagnosis. She was inspired to write a book to support telling young children that a parent has a “lump” without using the words “tumour” or “cancer”.
This beautifully-illustrated poem is aimed at children aged four to eight years, and can be read together as a supportive way to open discussions. The book includes a description for adults of the author’s own experiences of a brain tumour diagnosis and treatment and how she told her family.
Simone has also produced Daddy Has A Lump and a Welsh language version.
- Purchase Mummy Has A Lump from Amazon
- Purchase Daddy Has A Lump from Amazon
- Purchase Mae gan Mam lwmp from Amazon
All In My Head by Jessica Morris
All In My Head is a memoir by a woman who in her early fifties received a life-shattering diagnosis. It is about her determined search for effective treatment, the birth of a campaign to get proper data and funding for research into glioblastoma (GBM), and finally her coming to terms with the knowledge that she has reached the end of the road.
Jessica Morris takes the reader on a whirlwind journey. How does an ordinary person who last studied biology aged sixteen negotiate with world-renowned doctors and surgeons about cutting-edge treatments she must decide between? How do you remain positive when the median statistics suggest you have only fourteen months to live? How instead do you cast those fears aside and bounce back?
All In My Head is much more than a book about GBM. It takes the reader into the life of a woman who when confronted by devastating news chooses to be strong. It is about fighting adversity with hope and finding reasons to be positive in the darkest moments.
All Recommended Reading:
A Brain Tumour’s Travel Tale: Cards On The Table, I Pooed Myself - Claire Bullimore
After her shock diagnosis with a brain tumour, life-saving surgery and years of rehabilitation, Claire, the founder of Aunty M Brain Tumours, a blog and website dedicated to people affected by the disease, has written a book to help others.
Having had it all, a good job, nice boyfriend, lovely friends, Claire discovered she had something she didn’t want – a brain tumour. Even 12 years on, Claire, who underwent surgery for an intraventricular meningioma, is heavily reliant on seizure medication, suffers with fatigue and spasms on one side, has trouble finding words and is partially blind.
Her new book is a story of hope, of recovery and what happens when life doesn’t go according to plan, with the aim of helping others gain a better understanding of how brain tumours can be life-changing, with fundamental physical and mental effects.
Purchase this book from Amazon
Admissions: A life in Brain Surgery – Henry Marsh
Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered.
Purchase this book from Amazon.
A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
Rob Delaney's beautiful, bright, gloriously alive son Henry died. He was one when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. An experience beyond comprehension, but
an experience Rob must share. Why does he feel compelled to talk about it, to write about it, to make people feel something like what he feels when he knows it will hurt them? Because, despite Henry's death, Rob still loves people. For that reason, he wants them to understand.
A Heart That Works is an intimate, unflinching and fiercely funny exploration of loss - from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that follows, through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains.
Bitter Sweet – Gordon Shaw
This comic book has been created by graphic artist Gordon Shaw, following his diagnosis with a brain tumour to help people gain a greater understanding of cancer and the effect it has on patients. Gordon, who has named his tumour Rick (from the word ‘turmeric’), was diagnosed with a low-grade brain tumour in 2012 which quickly progressed to being high-grade. He is donating 5% of the proceeds from sales to Brain Tumour Research.
Purchase this book here.
Read Gordon’s brain tumour story here.
Brain Tumours: Living low grade – Gideon Burrows
Slow growing brain tumours change lives forever. This readable and moving non-technical guide is about living with a low grade tumour, a diagnosis given to thousands of people every year.
Purchase this book from Amazon.
Broken Brain: Brutally Honest, Brutally Me - Dr Aria Nikjooy
Broken Brain: Brutally Honest, Brutally Me is a no-holds-barred account of Aria Nikjooy’s life with a brain tumour. Painfully funny and honest, it is hoped that anyone affected by cancer – patients, family and friends – will draw hope and strength from the book. Raw and inspiring, the book also serves as a manual for medical professionals to understand what a patient goes through and to inspire them to remember the people behind the patients.
Christine Rowe: My Words– S. L. Perrin and Christine Rowe
Christine Rowe was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) in February 2021. She died on 21st May, just three months after her diagnosis.
At her funeral, the vicar read out a poem that Christine wrote in the 1960s for her then boyfriend Keith, who she would later marry. Her family discovered that she had written many more poems, which have now been compiled into a book published by her nephew, Steve Perrin.
Christine Rowe: My Words is an eclectic mix of traditional rhyming poems, free verse poems, folk songs and more, covering a range of topics from love and friendship to her favourite band, The Rolling Stones. The book also contains photos and touching messages from Christine’s family.
Proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to Brain Tumour Research in memory of Christine.
Purchase this book on AmazonSmile
Danny’s Journey – Chris Green
The true story of Danny Green’s battle with brain and spine cancer, as told by his dad Chris Green.
Purchase this book on our shop
Dark Days - Sue Hammond
This book came about after Sue lost her husband Jeff to pancreatic cancer and then her son Tom, 30, to brain cancer, only for her father to die a week later. These tragic events all happened during a devastating 10-month period with Tom coming home to die with his family, rather than remaining alone in a hospice during lockdown restrictions. He left two children aged three and 10.
Sue began writing the book, which started off as a journal, after she found counselling wasn’t helping and she was sliding into alcohol dependency. The book charts events leading up to the deaths of these three hugely significant men in Sue’s life and her grief at their terrible loss, but also shares lovely memories and funny anecdotes.
Sue hopes that her book will help others grieving for loved ones and raise awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours, while highlighting “not to be fobbed off by doctors”.
All proceeds from Dark Days will go to Brain Tumour Research to help find a cure for brain tumours.
Purchase this book from AmazonSmile
Do No Harm – Henry Marsh
“Why has no one ever written a book like this before? It simply tells the stories, with great tenderness, insight and self-doubt, of a phenomenal neurosurgeon…” – The Observer
Purchase this book from Amazon.
Every Day is a Battle (Fighting Demons, Jihadis and terminal cancer) - Rian Ilett
In March 2019, after being caught up in an explosion and flown home from the Middle East, Royal Marine Rian Ilett was diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain tumour and given less than 18 months to live. Applying the same positive thought process he had adopted in the military, Rian pushed his body to overcome the doctors’ prognosis. Now nearly three years post-diagnosis, Rian has published a book about his battlefield and brain tumour experiences.
Every Day is a Battle (Fighting Demons, Jihadis and terminal cancer) shares Rian’s unique journey of positivity and ‘never giving up’. It is available from Amazon here.
Everything That Makes Us Human - Case Notes of a Children's Brain Surgeon - Jay Jayahohan
“An unflinchingly human memoir- pacy. poignant and ultimately inspiring - by consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and start of the acclaimed BBC fly-on-the-wall series 'Brain Doctors' - Jay Jayahohan"
Purchase this book from Amazon.
Fightback from a brain tumour: A patient’s book of hope and survival - Jason Oliver
“Having survived three craniotomies, with the last being in 2011, and reaching the age of 40, Jason Oliver from Suffolk wanted to do something to help others. Knowing he couldn’t run a marathon, Jason decided to write a book about his brain tumour journey to bring hope and inspiration to others – and this book became his personal marathon".
Purchase this book from AmazonSmile.
Hope: My inspirational life - Tom Parker
As Tom said: “This is not a book about dying: it's a book about living. It's a book about finding hope in whatever situation you're dealt and living your best life no matter what.”
Purchase a copy of the book online
It's All In My Head: How to Survive a Brain Tumour and Find Peace of Mind – Jo Barlow
Jo’s real life story of feeling constantly dizzy and drunk for 4 months at the start of 2016, finally getting a MRI, and finding out she needed urgent brain surgery on a Hemangioblastoma (a benign blood vessel tumour) in her cerebellum. Written in the hope that her explaining how she felt both emotionally and the odd physical sensations that worried her, will support and help others who have been diagnosed with a brain tumour, or anyone needing brain surgery.
Purchase this book from Amazon.
Jack and Jen – Jeni McCrea
The true story of how your world is tipped on its head following a brain cancer diagnosis at a young age.
Purchase this book from Amazon.