My latest novel, The Darkest Night, was the runner up for the ADCI Literary Prize 2025, a prize for disabled or chronically ill authors which encourages greater positive representation of disability in literature. And, in case you didn’t know, July is Disability Pride Month, so I wanted to write about some of the books you should be reading this month that either feature a disabled character or are written by a disabled author.
It’s only when you’re writing a piece like this that you realise just how few novels feature characters with a disability or chronic illness. And in a world where disability benefits are being cut and disabled people’s voices are increasingly unheard, we need better understanding more than ever. In The Darkest Night, I didn’t want the story to centre around Selina’s disability in the same way I didn’t want it to centre around her sexuality – she’s a full person who happens to be both disabled and queer. I wrote more about this for Swords & Sapphics last year, which you can read here.
I’d love to read more fiction with disability representation, so drop your recommendations in the comments below!
The Darkest Night by Victoria Hawthorne
Runner-up for the ADCI Literary Prize 2025
When Ailsa Reid’s life in London begins to fall apart, she escapes to her grandparents’ house in Fife. But she arrives to find her grandmother, Moira – recently diagnosed with dementia – has gone missing.
Desperate to ensure Moira’s safe return, Ailsa must rely on the help of her estranged mother, Rowan. Tensions simmer between the two women as they attempt to piece together what has happened.
To find Moira, both Ailsa and Rowan must look to their ancestors, to a story about witches burned on the hill above the Reid house centuries ago and the curse laid upon the women that came after. Can they break the bonds of history in time to save their family? Or will the Reid curse be their undoing?
Alter Ego by Helen Heckety
Winner of the ADCI Literary Prize 2025
Hattie has a plan.
Step 1: Leave her life in London behind and never look back.
Step 2: Move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, with only the endless woods and starry skies for neighbours.
Step 3: Start her new life where nobody knows the truth about her.
But there’s a major problem with Step 3… When Hattie starts a new job and makes new friends, her lies start slipping through her fingers. As her carefully built façade begins to crack, she has no choice but to face the person she’s been running from all along: herself.
Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands
Winner of the McKitterick Prize 2025
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2025
Runner up for the the ADCI Literary Prize 2025
Fife, in the blazing hot summer of 1994. Cora Mowat’s mates don’t understand her, but then Cora Mowat doesn’t understand herself. She’s stuck on a seaside council estate full of dafties, old folk and seagulls, with a thousand dreams and a restless brain that won’t behave. She’s dying to escape but unsure of what the future holds – if it holds anything at all for a girl like her.
When her Mam’s new boyfriend moves in, tensions rise in their tiny house. Gunner means well, but he’s dodgy – a shaven-headed shoplifter with more than a few secrets stashed under the bed. As their attempts to forge a makeshift family unravel, Cora rails against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance and a path to something good. But sometimes you can’t move forward until you find your way back…
Sycorax by Nydia Hetherington
Born of the sun and moon, shaped by fire and malady, comes a young woman whose story has never been told…
They call her Sycorax. Seer. Sage. Sorceress.
Outcast by society and all alone in the world, Sycorax must find a way to understand her true nature. But as her powers begin to grow, so too do the suspicions of the local townspeople. For knowledge can be dangerous, and a woman’s knowledge is the most dangerous of all…
With a great storm brewing on the horizon, Sycorax finds herself in increasing peril – but will her powers save her, or will they spell the end for them all?
Overspill by Charlotte Paradise
Sara is twenty-five. She has never used a tampon without having a panic attack.
She starts dating Miles. For three months, they don’t touch. Miles respects her boundaries, though he longs for them to melt away. Sara desires Miles, but she knows her body, or rather she knows it is an unknowable thing.
Sara wants to be in love, to find a person who allows her to be herself. Someone who is happy with everything she is and everything she isn’t. Miles hopes he won’t hurt her.
But how do you navigate a relationship for which there is no blueprint? How do you love someone when your body is not your own, and how do you reclaim it?
Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes
Jamie Matson had once enjoyed a wonderful life working alongside her best friend, organising adventures for single-parent families, and her son Bo’s artistic flair a source of pride rather than concern.
She hadn’t been prepared to lose her business, her home and her friend. Not all in one dreadful year.
Jamie certainly hadn’t expected to find such hope and camaraderie in the queue at her local food bank. Thrown together with an unlikely and colourful group of people, their friendships flourish and, finding it easier to be objective about each other than about themselves, they decide that – when you’re all out of options – it’s okay to bend the rules a little and create your own.
What a difference a year could make…
Mother Sea by Lorraine Wilson
Winner of the ADCI Literary Prize 2024
Shortlisted for Scotland’s National Book Awards Scottish Fiction Book of the Year 2023
In an island community facing extinction, can hope rise stronger than grief?
Sisi de Mathilde lives on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. With the seas rising, the birth rate plummeting and her community under threat, she works as a scientist, reporting on local climate conditions to help protect her island home. But her life is thrown into turmoil when she finds herself newly widowed and unexpectedly pregnant.
When a group of outsiders arrive and try to persuade her community to abandon the island, Sisi is caught between the sacred ‘old ways’ of her ancestors and the possibilities offered by the outside world. As tensions rise and the islanders turn on one another, Sisi must fight to save her home, her people and her unborn child.
The Woman Next Door by Penny Batchelor
“It can’t be. Please God, don’t let it be. I left all that behind over twenty-five years ago. Didn’t I?”
We’ve just got home after two weeks of sun, sea and relaxation when the doorbell rings. My husband answers and as soon as I hear her voice something jolts through me. It’s adrenaline. My body is already in fight-or-flight mode.
It’s been twenty-five years, but I’d know that laugh anywhere. I freeze. Don’t let her in.
Now she’s standing in my kitchen, smiling and shaking my husband’s hand with her perfectly manicured nails. Stacey. She’s our new next-door neighbour. What is she doing here? What does she want this time? I worked so hard to put the past behind me, to build this life for myself.
I will not let her take it from me.
Awakened by Laura Elliott
Science has stolen sleep and awakened a world of horror.
“I’ve been an insomniac all of my life, but I’m not Sleepless and I won’t become Sleepless, just as long as the chips that were put into their heads never get put into mine. There’s little chance of that, since I won’t put the machinery into my brain and neither will Edgar and neither will the Professor, and we’re the only three left who could. I don’t want to be Sleepless…”
Civilisation has ended. In a bid to make us more productive, to give us more time, science took sleep from humanity. But sleeplessness turned people into feral monsters and now a small group of scientists are trapped in the Tower of London, consumed by guilt at what they have done and desperately searching for a cure. And then one day, as the last ravens circle, two miraculous survivors walk into the Tower.
Are they the answer or a terrible question?
All the Little Bird Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd- Barlow
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
WINNER OF THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS ADCI LITERARY AWARD
Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly – her clever, headstrong, teenaged daughter.
Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday’s book. Soon they are in and out of each others’ homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before. But beneath Vita and Rollo’s polish lies something else, something darker. For beneath Vita’s charm lies a desperation and a certain entitled ambition – to have a daughter just like Dolly, all to herself.
The Lamb by Lucy Rose
The #2 Sunday Times bestseller
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn’t at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires and make a bid for freedom.
The Exit Facility by Fiona Scott-Barrett
In Scotland, in the not too distant future, Elaine, a partially-sighted woman in her sixties, enters an exit facility. Down on her uppers, she is in search of a swift, free and dignified death so that she can preserve her last remaining asset – a small flat – for her daughter to inherit.
But once Elaine has checked in and finds her “Exit” delayed, the enforced wait leads her to question her choice and, more importantly, the state’s motives…
Sick to Death by Chris Bridges
Meet Emma. Emma is sick.
She can’t work because of a neurological condition, so is stuck in her family’s tiny council house.
Emma is sick of being told to ‘get over it’.
Her stepfather, her doctors, strangers – everyone has an opinion.
Emma is sick of being the other woman.
Her boyfriend Adam is perfect: he’s got a great job and an amazing home. His wife Celeste is the problem.
Emma is sick of being underestimated.
All she needed was a target. And now she has Celeste…
Emma is sick. Just not in the way you think.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links for ease, but please consider buying these books from your local bookshop or borrowing from the library. This ADCI Bookshop.org shop, run by author Claire Wade, is another great way to find books by disabled authors.
VIKKI PATIS 
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