Celebrating disabled voices: must-read books for Disability Pride Month

Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan and a list. After almost – but not quite – dying, she's come up with a list of directives to help her 'Get a Life'.

But it's not easy being bad, even when you've written out step–by–step guidelines. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job...

With tattoos and a motorbike, Red is the perfect helper in her mission to rebel, but as they spend more time together, Chloe realises there's much more to him than his tough exterior implies. Soon she's left wanting more from him than she ever expected . . . maybe there's more to life than her list ever imagined?

Get A Life, Chloe Brown represents fibromyalgia, chronic pain and mental health.

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal.

Written by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the 21st century, the International Booker Prize 2025 longlisted Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity's edge.

Hunchback represents congenital muscle disorder, scoliosis and use of respiratory aids.

The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan 

When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the spectre of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year – a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned – while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.

At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, The Hearing Test is a work of vitalising intellect and playfulness which marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression, and intent.

The Hearing Test represents sudden sensorineural hearing loss and hyperacusis.

The Fat Lady Sings by Jacqueline Roy

It is the 1990s, and Gloria is living in a London psychiatric ward. She is unapologetically loud, audacious and eternally on the brink of bursting into song. After several months of uninterrupted routine, she is joined by another young black woman – Merle – who is full of silences and fear.

Unable to confide in their doctors, they agree to journal their pasts. Whispered into tape recorders and scrawled ferociously at night, the remarkable stories of their lives are revealed.

In this tender, deeply-moving depiction of mental health, Roy creates a striking portrait of two women finding strength in their shared vulnerability, as they navigate a system that fails to protect them. Life-affirming and fearlessly hopeful, this is an unforgettable story.

The Fat Lady Sings represents mental health.

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a life told in reverse and a subversion of what we expect from stories of illness. Having been diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties, we follow Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fueled by her belief that to survive her chronic illness, she must be completely self-reliant.

Flowing backwards from 2016 to 1995, we meet Laura’s younger selves: her healthier selves. Laura as a daughter, a figure skater, a lover, and a mother – finally leading a life her own teenage self would be in awe of.

To be devoured intensely in one sitting, Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a beguiling meditation on relationships, motherhood, sexuality, pain and the limitations of our own bodies.

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully represents endometriosis, asthma, chronic pain and mental health.

Hits Different by Tasha Ghouri and Lizzie Huxley–Jones 

Cassie needs a change.

When an opportunity to dance on tour with a global superstar presents itself, Cassie decides to give it a shot. Jetting off for a hot summer in Ibiza, her dreams seem closer than ever, and so does real love. Levi, the guy she keeps bumping into, sees and uplifts her in a way no one else ever has. If only Cassie could believe in herself like he does, she might find that life hits different when you learn to love yourself first...

An empowering dance romance from Love Island star Tasha Ghouri and Lizzie Huxley-Jones.

Hits Different represents a Deaf main character who uses a cochlear implant.

The Coward by Jarred McGinnis 

After a car accident Jarred discovers he'll never walk again. Confined to a 'giant roller-skate', he finds himself with neither money nor job. Worse still, he's forced to live back home with the father he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Add in a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and the fact that total strangers now treat him like he's an idiot, it's a recipe for self-destruction. How can he stop himself careering out of control?

The Coward is about hurt and forgiveness. It's about how the world treats disabled people. And it's about how we write and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about our lives – and try to find a happy ending.

The Coward represents a wheelchair user with spinal cord injury.

Gender Theory by Madeline Docherty

Ella's with you at the party when you first kiss a girl.

And Ella takes you to the hospital the first time you're diagnosed.

Over the next few years you have a string of relationships and jobs, but you can always count on Ella to be there for you – until the drinking and the parties, the hospital visits and late-night calls, blur the lines of your friendship into something unbalanced and fragile, at risk of breaking altogether.

From a blazing new voice in Scottish fiction, Gender Theory is an incisive, affecting debut about illness, identity and how we care for those around us.

Gender Theory represents endometriosis, invisible illness, chronic pain and mental health.

Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

If you had the power to change the past... where would you start?

Cassie has never really fitted in. She remembers everything. Understands nothing. And consistently says the wrong thing.

But then Cassie discovers she has the power to go back and change things.

With endless chances to get it right, can she stop it all from going wrong?

As featured on BBC Radio 2 Book Club, The Times & Woman's Hour.

Cassandra in Reverse represents an autistic main character.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon 

Vern, a hunted woman alone in the woods, gives birth to twins and raises them away from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong – not with them, but with her own body. It's changing, it's itching, it's stronger, it's... not normal.

To understand her body's metamorphosis, Vern must investigate not just the
secluded religious compound she fled but the violent history of dehumanisation, medical experimentation, and genocide that produced it. In the course of reclaiming her own darkness, Vern learns that monsters aren't just individuals, but entire histories, systems, and nations.

Sorrowland represents a main character with albinism and visual impairment. 

True Biz by Sara Novic 

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies.

This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.

True Biz represents a cast of Deaf main characters and their lived experiences.

One For All by Lillie Lainoff

Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone thinks her near–constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but "a sick girl". But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father – a former Musketeer and her greatest champion. L'Academie des Mariees, Tania realises, is no finishing school. It's a secret training ground for new Musketeers.

This fierce story transports you to 17th century France, to a world of heart–racing duels and seductive soirees as our heroine fights against her chronic illness to train as a Musketeer, uncovering secrets, sisterhood, and self-love.

One For All represents Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).

Always Only You by Chloe Liese

Ren has known Frankie Zeferino was a woman worth waiting for since the moment they met. But as long as Frankie's the team's social media manager, she's off limits.

After waiting years for the right time to make his move, Ren learns Frankie plans to leave the team to pursue a new career. But what he didn't anticipate is how hard he'll have to work to convince her to let him have his shot at winning her heart.

Always Only You is a forbidden love sports romance about a nerdy, late-blooming hockey star, and his tough cookie co-worker who keeps both her soft side and her autism diagnosis to herself.

Always Only You represents an autistic main character with rheumatoid arthritis.

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

Strange Sally Diamond focuses on the idiosyncratic Sally – reclusive, neurodivergent, funny, and many more things, with a troubled childhood lurking in the shadows of her history.

Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died. Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she cannot remember. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends and big decisions, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.

Winner of the Irish Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year 2023.

Strange Sally Diamond represents neurodivergence and trauma.

Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonam–Young

Independent, confident, and not held back by her disability, Winnifred McNulty has been determined to prove to herself and others that she can do anything without needing anyone.

That all changes when Win meets Bo at a Halloween party, a charming boy in a pirate costume who has more in common with her than she realises. Bonding over the fact that they both have a visible disability, Win and Bo develop an electrifying connection with each other that they just can't ignore.

Nominated for Discover Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2025.

Out on a Limb represents main characters with limb differences and prosthesis.

What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle

Sharing stories of myths, legends and ancient bogs, a deaf child and her grandmother experiment with the lyrical beauty of sign language. Learning to communicate through their shared love of trees, they find solace in the shapes and susurrations of leaves in the wind.

A poignant tale of family bonding and the quiet acceptance of change. Winner of the Barbellion Prize 2021.

What Willow Says represents a Deaf main character and Irish Sign Language (ISL).

Body Friend by Katherine Brabon

A woman leaves the hospital after an operation and starts swimming in a pool in Melbourne's inner suburbs. There she meets Frida, who is uncannily like her in her experience of illness. Soon after, she meets another woman in a local park, Sylvia, who sees her pain and encourages her to rest.

The two new friends seem to be polar opposites: Frida adores the pool and the natural world, Sylvia clings to the protection of interior worlds. What begins as two seemingly simple friendships is challenged by what each woman asks of her, of themselves, and their bodies. Body Friend explores the relationship between body and self, and how we must dive beneath the surface to really know ourselves.

Body Friend represents chronic illness, autoimmune disorder and post-surgical rehabilitation.

All Tangled Up in Autism and Chronic Illness: A guide to navigating multiple conditions by Charli Clement

In this ground-breaking debut, Charli Clement combines their own experiences alongside unique short profiles from individuals with chronic illness, to provide an intimate and insightful look at the complexities of living as an autistic and chronically ill person.

With a focus on the unique neurodivergent experience and an exploration into disability pride and joy All Tangled Up in Autism and Chronic Illness is a necessary and empowering resource for autistic and chronically ill people as well as for family members, friends, and healthcare professionals.

All Tangled Up in Autism and Chronic Illness represents autism and chronic illness 

Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma

Haben defines disability as an opportunity for innovation. She learned non-visual techniques for everything from dancing salsa to handling an electric saw. She developed a text-to-braille communication system that created an exciting new way to connect with people. Haben pioneered her way through obstacles, graduated from Harvard Law, and now uses her talents to advocate for people with disabilities.

Haben takes readers through a thrilling game of blind hide-and-seek in Louisiana, a treacherous climb up an iceberg in Alaska, and a magical moment with President Obama at The White House. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, this captivating memoir is a testament to one woman's determination to find the keys to connection.

Haben represents deafblindness. 

Go the Way Your Blood Beats by Emmett de Monterey 

When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too heavy for his twenty-five-year-old artist parents and their happy, smiling baby.

Growing up in south-east London in the 1980s, Emmett is spat at on the street and prayed over at church. At his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and he loses a stone from the effort of getting up the stairs. At his sixth form college for disabled students, he's told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, if he's gay.

And then Emmett is chosen for a first-of-its-kind surgery in America which he hopes will 'cure' him, enable him to walk unaided. But the 'miracle' doesn't occur, and Emmett must reckon with a world which views disabled people as invisible, unworthy of desire. He must fight to be seen.

Go the Way Your Blood Beats represents cerebral palsy.

Disability Visibility by Alice Wong 

A revelatory exploration of disability in the twenty-first century, this collection of trailblazing essays gathers together blog posts, manifestos and testimonies from a wide range of disabled thinkers and activists.

From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her famous debate with Princeton philosopher Peter Singer over her own personhood, to original pieces by up-and-coming authors; from blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, testimonies to Congress, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

Disability Visibility by Alice Wong represents a range of disabled lived experiences from a collection of activist voices, including representation of spina bifida, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, deafness, blindness, neurodivergence, chronic illnesses, facial differences and more.

The Girl From Aleppo: Nujeen's Escape from War to Freedom by Nujeen Mustafa with Christina Lamb

Nujeen Mustafa has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. This did not stop her from braving inconceivable odds to travel in her wheelchair from Syria in search of a new life. Sharing her full story for the first time, Nujeen recounts the details of her childhood and disability, as well as the specifics of her harrowing journey across the Mediterranean to Greece and finally to Germany to seek an education and the medical treatment she needs.

In her strong, positive voice, Nujeen tells the story of what it is really like to be a refugee, to have grown up in a dictatorship only for your life to be blighted by war; to have left a beloved homeland to become dependent on others. It is the story of our times told through the incredible bravery of one remarkable girl determined to keep smiling.

The Girl From Aleppo represents a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy.

A Still Life: A Memoir by Josie George

Josie George lives in a tiny terraced house in the urban West Midlands with her son. Since her early childhood, she has lived with the fluctuating and confusing challenge of disabling chronic illness.

But Josie's world is surprising, intricate, dynamic. She has learned what to look for: the routines of her friends at the community centre; the neighbourhood birds in flight; the slow changes in the morning light, in her small garden, in her growing son, in herself.

Against a world which values progress and productivity above all else, Josie sets out a quietly radical alternative: to value and treasure life for life itself, with all its great and small miracles.

A Still Life represents chronic pain and invisible illness. 

Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery by David Harewood 

When David Harewood was twenty-three, his acting career beginning to take flight, he had what he now understands to be a psychotic breakdown and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He was physically restrained by six police officers, sedated, then hospitalised and transferred to a locked ward. Only now, thirty years later, has he been able to process what he went through. 

In this powerful and provocative account of a life lived after psychosis, Harewood uncovers devastating family history and investigates the very real impact of racism on Black mental health. Maybe I Don't Belong Here is a deeply personal exploration of the duality of growing up both Black and British and a rallying cry to examine the systems and biases that continue to shape our society.

Shortlisted for The British Book Awards 2022 Discover Book of the Year.

Maybe I Don't Belong Here represents mental health and life after psychosis.

My Nonidentical Twin: One ordinary girl. One life–changing condition. How Tourette’s changes your world. by Evie Meg, aka This Trippy Hippie

Happy-go-lucky Evie Meg was an award-winning teenage gymnast who dreamed of becoming a teaching assistant. But when she developed a hiccup tic that gave way to increasingly severe health problems the doctors couldn't solve, could the power of an online community stop her from disappearing into the darkness?

Following on from her hugely popular social media content, TikTok sensation Evie Meg shares more heartwarming and honest stories about living with Tourette Syndrome.

My Nonidentical Twin represents Tourette Syndrome.

Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince 

For over thirty years, award-winning broadcaster and comedian Robin Ince has entertained thousands in person and on air. But underneath the surface, a whirlwind was at play – a struggle with sadness, concentration, self-doubt and near-constant anxiety. But then he discovered he had all the hallmarks of ADHD and his stumbling blocks became stepping stones.

A powerful, personal exploration of anxiety, ADHD and neurodiversity, Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal reminds us all – no matter how weird we feel – that it's okay to be a little different. We all are.

Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal represents anxiety, ADHD and neurodiversity.

Kika & Me: How One Extraordinary Guide Dog Changed My World by Amit Patel

Amit Patel is working as a trauma doctor when a rare condition causes him to lose his sight within thirty-six hours. Totally dependent on others and terrified of stepping outside with a white cane after he's assaulted, he hits rock bottom. He refuses to leave home on his own for three months. With the support of his wife Seema he slowly adapts to his new situation, but how could life ever be the way it was? Then his guide dog Kika comes along...

The partnership not only gives Amit a renewed lease of life but a new best friend. Then, after a video of an irate commuter rudely asking Amit to step aside on an escalator goes viral, he sets out with Kika by his side to spread a message of positivity and inclusivity, showing that nothing will hold them back.

Kika & Me represents blindness and the relationship between the author and his guide dog.

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady 

Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she's had loads of boyfriends and is good at eye contact. This is a story of how being female can get in the way of being autistic and how being autistic gets in the way of being the 'right kind' of woman.

Exploring class, mental health, societal pressures and individual ambition, Strong Female Character is a candid and groundbreaking memoir of neurodiversity, sexism and defying expectations.

The Books Are My Bag Reader's Awards Non-Fiction winner 2023 and winner of the Nero Non-Fiction Award 2023.

Strong Female Character represents autism and mental health.

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean–Dominique Bauby

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless. But his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been.

Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he was determined to tell his remarkable story, dictated letter by letter. It is one of the most remarkable memoirs ever written.

The Diving–Bell and the Butterfly represents locked–in syndrome and life in recovery from a major stroke.

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty

From spring and through a year in his home patch in Northern Ireland, Dara spent the seasons writing. These vivid, evocative and moving diary entries about his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world are raw in their telling.

I was diagnosed with Asperger's/autism aged five... By age seven I knew I was very different, I had got used to the isolation, my inability to break through into the world of talking about football or Minecraft was not tolerated. Then came the bullying. Nature became so much more than an escape; it became a life-support system.

Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, winner of the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award 2019, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Diary of a Young Naturalist represents autism.

Shattered by Hanif Kureishi 

From Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia, a memoir about the accident that left him paralysed.

Imagine your life changing in a second: one minute you are watching the football with a beer, the next you are on the floor in a pool of blood, deprived of the use of your arms and legs. 

This happened to Hanif Kureishi on Boxing Day 2022. His account of what happened and its aftermath is a unique, riveting and frequently riotous account of a year-long odyssey home through five hospitals. From despair to hope, rage to courage, it might be the most truthful, and the funniest, medical disaster story ever written.

Shattered represents sudden paralysis and the author's journey through recovery.

Meaty: Essays by Samantha Irby 

The smart, edgy, hilarious, and unabashedly raunchy New York Times bestselling author explodes onto the printed page in her uproarious first collection of essays.

Irby laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood: chin hairs, depression, failed relationships, taco feasts, inflammatory bowel disease and more. This much-beloved romp is a treat for anyone in dire need of scathing wit and poignant candour.

Meaty represents Crohn’s disease, arthritis and chronic pain, mental health and trauma.

The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus

The Perseverance is the remarkable debut book of poems by British-Jamaican author Raymond Antrobus. Ranging across history and continents, these poems operate in the spaces in between, their haunting lyrics creating new, hybrid territories. The Perseverance is a book of loss, contested language and praise, where elegies for the poet’s father sit alongside meditations on the d/Deaf experience.

Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, winner of the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award 2019, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

The Perseverance represents the d/Deaf experience.

Keep Laughing by Chris McCausland 

Beloved comedian and reigning Strictly champion tells his incredible story, from the gradual loss of his sight to winning the glitterball trophy, using all of his trademark side-splitting humour.

After growing up in Liverpool and studying software engineering at Kingston University, Chris lost his sight at the age of twenty-two. Forced to rethink his career plans, he worked in sales before applying for a job as a spy at MI5. But, following an appearance at an open mic night in 2003, he turned his hand to stand-up. National Security’s loss was comedy’s gain. And he promises that his book ‘will be really funny’.

Keep Laughing represents blindness and vision loss. Publishing in October 2025.