Welcome to the Authors with Disabilities Showcase, An Online Bookstore Full of Books by Disabled Authors!
Come in, come in! So glad you stopped by my E-store, full (or soon to be full) to the brim with books! But not just any books.
All the books on these shelves are written by authors with disabilities.
That’s how, and why, this E-store came to be: it was born out of a desire to be a place to showcase the talent and diversity among the disabled community, as well as a space to foster conversations around the subjects broached in the pages of their books. Through words, these authors tell their stories with courage, passion, vulnerability and strength. And my hope for you is that you will find something encouraging, educating, enthralling, and overall, enjoyable to read. (How ’bout that alliteration, eh?] And when you do, don’t forget to let me know what you thought!
The following are affiliate links, so if you purchase one of these books through the links on this page, I will earn a small commission. With every purchase, you are supporting and empowering authors with disabilities to keep writing and telling their stories. I, and the authors whose books are on these shelves, thank you for your support.
And be sure to check back frequently as I will be continually adding new titles to the bookstore. You don’t want to miss it!
Please note that there are multiple formats of each book available on Amazon, [paperback, audio, Kindle, etc], so please choose the format which works best for you from the link provided.
Fiction
Non Fiction
Books For Children
Books About Guide Dogs
FICTION
Jubilant
by Galadriel Coffeen and Anneliese Knop
Unlikely allies join forces against an enemy hidden in the shadows.
People mysteriously disappear around the Fosseni archipelago in this slow-burn nautical fantasy adventure. When the six nations signed the Shallic Sea Accords fifty years ago the sea should have become safe for travel once again. But in a world where pirates, slavers and magical monsters lurk in every sheltered cove, nothing is guaranteed.
When a ruthless swordswoman frozen by grief finds herself thrust into the middle of an international crisis, she must choose between secrets and safety. She joins forces with a young lieutenant angered by an unjust system to find a missing ambassador and rescue the kidnapped slaves.
— From the Amazon Product Page
The Centaur’s Wife
by Amanda Leduc
Amanda Leduc’s brilliant new novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic, is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures.
Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family are among only a few who survived.
But the mountain that looms over the city is still green–somehow it has been spared the destruction that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Heather is one of the few who know the mountain, a place city-dwellers have always been forbidden to go. Her dad took her up the mountain when she was a child on a misguided quest to heal her legs, damaged at birth. The tragedy that resulted has shaped her life, bringing her both great sorrow and an undying connection to the deep magic of the mountain, made real by the beings she and her dad encountered that day: Estajfan, a centaur born of sorrow and of an ancient, impossible love, and his two siblings, marooned between the magical and the human world. Even as those in the city around her–led by Tasha, a charismatic doctor who fled to the city from the coast with her wife and other refugees–struggle to keep everyone alive, Heather constantly looks to the mountain, drawn by love, by fear, by the desire for rescue. She is torn in two by her awareness of what unleashed the meteor shower and what is coming for the few survivors, once the green and living earth makes a final reckoning of the usefulness of human life and finds it wanting.
At times devastating, but ultimately redemptive, Amanda Leduc’s fable for our uncertain times reminds us that the most important things in life aren’t things at all, but rather the people we want by our side at the end of the world.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Buy The Centaur’s Wife on Amazon
NON-FICTION
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
by Judith Heumann
A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism – from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington – Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.
Paralyzed from polio at 18 months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her teacher’s license because of paralysis, judy’s actions set precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people.
As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of more than 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites listeners to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally
by Emily Ladau
An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more inclusive place
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Booklist • “A candid, accessible cheat sheet for anyone who wants to thoughtfully join the conversation . . . Emily makes the intimidating approachable and the complicated clear.”—Rebekah Taussig, author of Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body
People with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us—disabled and nondisabled alike—don’t know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. Demystifying Disability is a friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about, including:
• How to appropriately think, talk, and ask about disability
• Recognizing and avoiding ableism (discrimination toward disabled people)
• Practicing good disability etiquette
• Ensuring accessibility becomes your standard practice, from everyday communication to planning special events
• Appreciating disability history and identity
• Identifying and speaking up about disability stereotypes in media
Authored by celebrated disability rights advocate, speaker, and writer Emily Ladau, this practical, intersectional guide offers all readers a welcoming place to understand disability as part of the human experience.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Buy Demystifying Disability on Amazon
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
by Alice Wong
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent – but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.
From original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma, to blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, Congressional testimonies, and beyond: This anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites listeners to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
by Amanda Leduc
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty?
ONE OF ENTROPY MAGAZINE’S BEST NONFICTION OF 2020/2021
If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
How to Lose Everything: A Memoir
by Christa Couture
Christa Couture has come to know every corner of grief—its shifting blurry edges, its traps, its pulse of love at the centre and the bittersweet truth that sorrow is a powerful and wise emotion.
From the amputation of her leg as a cure for bone cancer at a young age to her first child’s single day of life, the heart transplant and subsequent death of her second child, the divorce born of grief and then the thyroidectomy that threatened her career as a professional musician, How to Lose Everything delves into the heart of loss. Couture bears witness to the shift in perspective that comes with loss, and how it can deepen compassion for others, expand understanding, inspire a letting go of little things and plant a deeper feeling for what matters. At the same time, Couture’s writing evokes the joy and lightness that both precede and eventually follow grief, as well as the hope and resilience that grow from connections with others.
Evoking Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, Couture explores the emotional and psychological experiences of motherhood, partnership and change. Deftly connecting the dots of sorrow, reprieve and hard-won hope, How to Lose Everything contains the advice Couture is often asked for, as well as the words she wishes she could have heard many years ago. It is also an offering of kinship and understanding for anyone experiencing a loss.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Buy How To Lose Everything on Amazon
It’s Not What It looks Like
by Molly Burke
Close your eyes and get ready to see the world in a new and more positive way. As a child in Toronto, Molly Burke was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and became completely sightless as a teenager. Now an award-winning YouTube star and global influencer, Molly shares what it’s like to be a purple-haired, pink-obsessed fashion and makeup lover in a seeing world. She speaks with authenticity and candor about how she tackles the preconceived notions we have around blindness; Molly has made it her mission to make us see her – and ourselves- in a wholly empowering way. Learn about her struggles with bullying and anxiety, her quest for inclusivity, how she built a successful influencer business (with more than 1.8 million followers), and what it’s really like to travel with the true star of this audio, her service dog, Gallop.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Buy It’s Not What It Looks Like on Amazon
Poster Child: A Memoir
by Emily Rapp
Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she’d had dozens of operations, had lost most of her leg, from just above the knee, and had become the smiling, indefatigable “poster child” for the March of Dimes. For years she made appearances at church suppers and rodeos, giving pep talks about how normal and happy she was. All the while she was learning to live with what she later described as “my grievous, irrevocable flaw,” and the paradox that being extraordinary was the only way to be ordinary.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body
by Rebekah Taussig
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the ’90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.
Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.
Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
The Disability Experience: Working Toward Belonging
by Hannalora Leavitt
People with disabilities (PWDs) have the same aspirations for their lives as you do for yours. The difference is that PWDs don’t have the same access to education, employment, housing, transportation and healthcare in order to achieve their goals. In The Disability Experience you’ll meet people with different kinds of disabilities, and you’ll begin to understand the ways PWDs have been ignored, reviled and marginalized throughout history. The book also celebrates the triumphs and achievements of PWDs and shares the powerful stories of those who have fought for change.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Buy The Disability Experience on Amazon
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Forward, Shakespeare
by Jean Littel
Seeing-eye pup, Shakespeare, conquered many fears in Rescue Pup. Now he is back, about to be matched up with a blind boy, ready to begin his working life. Tim is enraged by his blindness and wants nothing to do with a guide dog. But he is no match for Shakespeare.
— From the Amazon Product Page
NOTE: Forward, Shakespeare follows Rescue Pup [listed below]. Please read Rescue Pup first.
Buy Forward, Shakespeare on Amazon
From Anna
by Jean Little
Jean Little’s classic celebrates its 40th anniversary with a new look for a new generation!
Nine-year-old Anna has always been the clumsy one in the family ― somehow she can never do anything right. She bumps into tables, and she can’t read the chalkboard at school. Her perfect brothers and sisters call her “Awkward Anna.”
When Papa announces that the family is moving from Germany to Canada ― he’s worried about what the Nazis’ rise to power will bring ― Anna’s heart sinks. How can she learn English when she can’t even read German properly?
But when the Soldens arrive in Canada, Anna learns that there is a reason for her clumsiness. And suddenly, wonderfully, her whole world begins to change, especially when new friends at her special school help her stand up to bullies who call her names.
A truly heartwarming story, From Anna will resonate with any child who has ever felt left out. This 40th anniversary edition includes an Introduction by Katherine Paterson and and Afterword by Jean Little herself.
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page
Rescue Pup
by Jean Little
He may be just a puppy, but he wasn’t named Shakespeare for nothing!
— From the Amazon Product Page
NOTE: Rescue Pup precedes Forward, Shakespeare [listed above].
The View From Under the Pew
by Diane Winters Johnson
This beautifully-illustrated storybook introduces children to the true story of Walter, a guide dog who assists Pastor Diane through her day at the church. Walter helps Pastor Diane minister to others as they visit the sick at the hospital and attend church meetings and potluck suppers. Walter is her faithful companion as Pastor Diane conducts Bible studies and leads worship. Walter loves his view from under the pew, where he can listen to the choir sing and see the faces of families who have come to church to worship God together.
— From the Amazon Product Page
Buy The View From Under The Pew on Amazon
BOOKS ABOUT GUIDE DOGS
Sightless in Seattle: Adventures with My Guide Dog
by Claire Anderson
Every seven minutes another American loses their eyesight and joins the ranks of the estimated ten million legally blind in the United States.Until this kind of tragedy strikes close to home, few people consider the unique challenges and triumphs specific to relearning their independence. Claire Anderson is one of these individuals. After sixty-four years of an active lifestyle, she lost the sight in both of her eyes due to a stroke in the optical nerves.As a seasoned writer and personal witness to the challenges and triumphs of overcoming a loss of vision, Claire has written this heartwarming and educational nonfiction book about learning to live, love, and share with her first, and only, Seeing Eye dog, DaVida.Taken straight from her personal journals written during her time at Seeing Eye dog school, this delightful book will take the reader along on the journey of two inexperienced individuals, both dog and woman, coming together to form a team.
— From the Amazon Product Page
Buy Sightless in Seattle on Amazon
Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero
by Michael Hingson
An instant New York Times bestseller, Thunder Dog tells the true story of a blind man, his guide dog, and the life-changing power of faith and trust in the face of terror.
When one of four hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center’s North Tower on September 11, 2001, Michael Hingson, a district sales manager for a data protection and network security systems company, was sitting down for a meeting. His guide dog, Roselle, was at his feet.
Blind from birth, Michael could hear the sounds of shattering glass, falling debris, and terrified people flooding all around him. But Roselle sat calmly beside him. In that moment, Michael chose to trust Roselle’s judgment and not to panic. They were a team.
As you relive that fateful day in September 2001 alongside Michael and Roselle, you’ll learn:
The ways that grief and loss can lead the way for change
How the rare trust between a man and his guide dog can inspire your own unshakeable faith
The healing power of telling your own story
— From The Amazon.ca Product Page