Books like Empty cradles by Humphreys, Margaret.

Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s poignant memoir chronicles his battle with stage IV metastatic lung cancer and his reflections on life, medicine, and mortality.

C.S. Lewis’s personal journal of grief following his wife’s death, offering reflective meditations on loss, faith, and the quest for meaning.

"On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her"--From publisher's website.

Diana Walsh recounts the days leading up to the abduction of her newborn infant, a true‑crime account based on court records and media reports, set just before Christmas in 2008.

Charlotte, the vicar’s privileged daughter, battles a tyrannical father who forces her into secrecy and confinement. Her yearning for freedom clashes with the harsh customs of her time, as she navigates pregnancy, deception, and a convent’s cruelty.