Top 25 Books About Death And Afterlife Updated 04 /2024

There are many people who believe that there is life after death because of religious teachings or because they have had good experiences. Others don't believe that our consciousness doesn't stop when we die. No matter which category you fall into, reading about life after death can offer valuable insights on the topic of death.

In this article, we’ll offer our top 15 favorite books to help you understand life after death. Whether you believe in God or not, these books will give you something to think about and a new way to look at death.

Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death by Raymond A. Moody, Jr.

Raymond Moody, who is known as the "father of the modern NDE movement," presents a groundbreaking scientific study in this book. Life After Death was first published in 1975. Since then, it has caused people to be curious about the afterlife and to think about it.

The bright light, the tunnel, and the idea that our loved ones are waiting for us on the other side are all things you've seen before.

In Life After Death, Moody talks about his study of 100 people who died and came back to life. Then you'll read about their lives, in their own words, and think about what happens after death.

The Near-Death Experience by Lee W. Bailey and Jenny Yates

If you want to take a deep-dive into near-death experiences (NDEs), The Near-Death Experience is essential reading. It has a lot of stories and cases about people who have had near-death experiences. It lets people look at the same thing through a lot of different perspectives.

When a biologist talks about how endorphins and vivid hallucinations might happen in the brain at the end of life, philosophy focuses more on the symbolic.

Different religions also talk about NDEs in different ways. If you go through the near-death experience, it will give you different spiritual interpretation from each religion's point of view, as well.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

You can't get sick or old in "Elsewhere." Liz, the 14-year-old protagonist of the book Elsewhere, dies and ends up in Elsewhere after she goes there.

When Liz moves to a place that isn't very different from Earth but is still very similar, she has a hard time adjusting.

This moving book takes readers on an emotional yet lighthearted journey about grief, death, and accepting the inevitable.

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo

Colton Burpo is a young boy who had an emergency surgery and survived. Heaven is for Real shows his journey. After Colton got better, his parents were shocked to hear about his trip to heaven and back.

As a child, Colton talks about how he left his body during surgery. They were in another room of the hospital when he was born. He can tell you what they were doing.

In this nonfiction book, Colton's father tells the story of his son's life after death in a way that is both fascinating and moving.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Susie Salmon, who is 14 when we first meet her, is already in heaven. I don't know what happened to her in 1973, and I don't know what happened to her.

Susie talks about her tragic death in the smart voice of a teenage girl, from a strange place that looks like a school playground.

In The Lovely Bones, we experience the pain and loss of Susie’s family as they hunt for their daughter’s killer. When we read Susie's story, we also get a glimpse into how life will be when we die.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

He wrote the best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie. In this book, Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, talks about the idea that heaven is more than just a place.

Story: Eddie is a war veteran who has been hurt by a bullet. 83 years old, Eddie dies and wakes up in the afterlife. He learns the truth about "heaven" from the people who live there.

Eddie realizes that heaven isn't a place you go to. It's a place where five people tell you the story of your own life, and you hear it from them. It talks about the question that many of us ask ourselves when we think about death: "Why was I here?" ”

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander

Scientists have said that near-death experiences are not possible, and Dr. Eben Alexander was one of them. As a skilled neurosurgeon, Dr. Alexander understood that NDEs felt real; but he theorized that they were merely hallucinations induced by extreme stress.

After he gets sick, Dr. Alexander comes to a new understanding of life after death. It takes him days to come out of a coma. Then, when Dr. Alexander was on the brink of death, he saw things that he couldn't figure out with science alone.

Evidence of the Afterlife by Jeffrey Long with Paul Perry

It was founded by Dr. Long and his wife, Jody, in 1998. They wanted to make a place where "experiencers" could talk about what they had been through and share their stories.

Dr. Long used the foundation to get more than 1,600 verified stories of near-death experiences.

The evidence for an afterlife is very strong in this book, Evidence of the Afterlife. Long makes one of the most convincing arguments for an afterlife yet.

Life After Death: The Burden of Proof  by Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra is known all over the world for his work in mind-body medicine. It's a question we all have: what happens after you die? In Life After Death, Chopra talks about that.

Chopra draws on his own experiences and knowledge, as well as ancient knowledge and philosophy. In order to connect the theoretical with the real, he uses particle physics and other types of science.

Life After Death helps readers confront their fears of dying, and to consider even some of the more fantastical theories of the afterlife.

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton

Dr. Michael Newton is a hypnotherapist who has come up with a way to get patients' hidden memories of the afterlife. Journey of Souls is a book written by him. It's a book filled with travel logs from 29 of his patients.

From a state of deep hypnosis—or “superconsciousness”—subjects describe precisely what happened to them between states of reincarnation (here are more books on recarnation if this interests you) (here are more books on recarnation if this interests you). They explain what they experienced between the end of a previous life and the start of the next.

Journey of Souls presents a unique interpretation of the afterlife and what happens there, depicted through tales of past-life regression.

Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life by James Van Praagh

Unfinished Business gives you a new way to learn about the afterlife: from the point of view of people who have already gone.

When James Van Praagh talks to spirits and reads minds, he's been doing this work for over 25 years. In his book, he shares advice and personal stories from the departed who have used him as a medium.

Through these stories, James Van Praagh takes the reader on a journey from this world to the next. He conveys everything he’s learned from his time in the medium business, from the importance of karma to the dangers of emotional baggage.

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

Leaving Time is a novel that guides the readers through a story about life after death. She can't stop thinking about her mother, who mysteriously vanished more than a decade ago.

Alice doesn't believe her mother left her. Instead, she spends a lot of time looking for her mother on the internet. She pores over her mother’s journals for clues. Jenna's memories of her mother start to match up with the events that happen in the journals.

When Jenna gets help from a psychic and a former police officer, she quickly comes to an unusual conclusion to her search.

On Life After Death by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In the world, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is a well-known author of a book called On Death and Dying. She is one of the world's best experts on death and grief. With this book, On Life After Death, Kubler-Ross demonstrates her expertise in the topic of life after death, too.

This book of nonfiction is made up of four essays written by Dr. Kubler-Ross when he worked with people who were dying. When she met these patients, she was able to figure out "what life is all about."

On Life After Death provides expert, in-depth research on life after depth, as well as Dr. Kubler-Ross’s personal thoughts opinions about the topic.

Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children by Melvin Morse

In the past, children have shown some of the strongest evidence that there is life after death. In Closer to the Light, Dr. Melvin Morse presents interviews with hundreds of these children, each of whom was once declared clinically dead.

Dr. Morse theorizes that children more readily remember their afterlife experiences than adults. It's because, according to Morse, children haven't yet learned about how we think about death as a group.

In Closer to the Light, these children share their first-hand accounts of telepathic communication, out-of-body travel, and meeting dead family members, all after death.

The Afterlife of Billy Fingers by Annie Kagan

Annie Kagan isn't a medium, but she has talked to the dead: her dead brother, Billy, has been one of them. In The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, Annie shares the true story of how her brother started speaking with her, weeks after his untimely death.

After death communication (ADC) stories have been written down for a long time, but Kagan's story is one of the most detailed and interesting. There is a lot more to the story than Billy's near-death experience. It talks about his vivid afterlife.

---