Books like What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan

A candid memoir of Trevor Noah’s childhood in apartheid‑era South Africa, blending humor, heart, and social insight as he navigates a world where he was never meant to exist.

Two teens on the brink of heartbreak and despair find an unlikely friendship that turns their worlds upside‑down, teaching them that hope can bloom even beside the darkest thoughts.

The Bell Jar is the sole novel by Sylvia Plath, a psychologically intense and autobiographical look at a young woman’s decline into mental illness.

A collection of linked short stories that follows a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences, thoughts, and burdens during the Vietnam War.

Eighteen‑year‑old Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital in 1967, where she documents life in the psychiatric ward, exploring mental illness, recovery, and the cultural landscape of the late 1960s.

A memoir of a woman who overcomes a strict survivalist Mormon upbringing in rural Idaho to pursue higher education, ultimately earning a PhD in history at Cambridge.

Olympic medalist Deena Kastor reveals how mastering the mind unlocked her record-setting running career, blending personal history with practical mental‑training strategies for peak performance.

Pat Barker reimagines the final days of the Trojan War through the eyes of Briseis, the captured concubine of Achilles, revealing the voices of the women walled in the Greek camp.

An inspiring biography of American women swimmers, highlighting their athletic achievements and contributions to the sport.

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating and dangerous territory of this form of madness - a world in which one pole can be the alluring dark land ruled by what Byron called the "melancholy star of the imagination," and the other a desert of depression and, all too frequently, death. A moving and exhilarating memoir by a woman whose furious determination to learn the enemy, to use her gifts of intellect to make a difference, led her to become, by the time she was forty, a world authority on manic-depression, and whose work has helped save countless lives.

A biography of the African-American woman who overcame crippling polio as a child to become the first woman to win three gold medals in track in a single Olympics.

A compelling romance that delves into the challenges of addiction, depression, and the search for meaning, set in a vibrant urban landscape where love and loss intertwine.

A sports journalist chronicles the life of Ivy League freshman Maddy Holleran, a promising track star whose public success masked deep mental illness, ultimately leading to her tragic suicide during the spring semester.