Every year from all the books we review on this website, we choose the Best Spiritual Books. In addition to 50 adult books, we include 10 Best Spiritual Children's Books.
These are the titles that have most impressed and inspired us during the year. Since we only review books that we want to recommend to you for your spiritual journey, this selection actually represents the best of the best. Through diverse approaches, drawing upon the wisdom and practices of the world's religions and spiritual paths, these books explore the quest for meaning and purpose, wholeness and healing, commitment and community, contemplation and activism.
We congratulate the authors and publishers of these exceptional contributions to today's spiritual renaissance. Click on the title link to read the full review.
Awake and Alive by Jon M. Sweeney
A collection of interviews with six novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani whose teacher and spiritual guide was Thomas Merton.
Awakenings by Joan Chittister
One of our great living spiritual writers urging us to wake up and see.
Between the Listening and the Telling by Mark Yaconelli
Accounts of how storytelling can be used for soul care, often in unexpected places.
Birthing the Holy by Christine Valters Paintner
Inspiration from archetypal images and interpretations of the Virgin Mary that reveal ways to find new growth and greater vitality in your life.
Buddhish by C. Pierce Salguero
Buddhism for mindfulness practitioners wanting to go deeper.
The Bear Is My Father by Bear Heart, Reginah WaterSpirit
Insights for living well, with spirit, from a great late Indigenous medicine man.
Dearest Sister Wendy by Sister Wendy Beckett, Robert Ellsberg
Nearly three years of correspondence between the art historian and religious Carmelite and a book publisher and author about art, God, and some of the major religious figures of the twentieth century.
The Death of Sitting Bear by N. Scott Momaday
A collection from a Native American poet for loving and singing to the Earth and each other.
The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature by Dean Sluyter
A lively introduction to great works of literature as gates to joy and enlightenment.
Do I Stay Christian? By Brian D. McLaren
Answers from one of our most eloquent Christian teachers for those asking: Why bother?
Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest by Ruth Haley Barton
Reasons and practices for keeping a Sabbath and the joy and delight that result from it.
The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon by Bill McKibben
A memoir that turns into a passionate appeal for faithful people to build an equitable American future.
God Is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland
A psychologist and theologian's explorations of the Sacred Black Feminine juxtaposed to the "whitemalegod" who needs to be knocked down.
God is Here by Toba Spitzer
Creative new paths from a rabbi for finding what’s sacred in our lives.
The God Who Riots by Damon Garcia
A Mexican-American activist's portrait of Jesus that may look unfamiliar to many Christians.
Hagitude by Sharon Blackie
Celtic and Indigenous wisdom for adult female flourishing.
How to Heal Our Divides, Volume Two by Brian Allain, Adam Thomas (editors)
Essays from writers of different traditions on resources, ideas, and places for healing interpersonal divides and our alienation from the Earth.
How to Inhabit Time by James Smith
A philosopher on the spiritual significance of keeping time, drawing wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes and well-known authors.
How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chodron
A Tibetan Buddhist perspective on contemplating your death and transforming your pain into awakening.
The Inside Story by Susan Sands
Recommendations of embodiment tools for loving your maturing self and correcting distorted body images.
Judaism without Tribalism by Rami Shapiro
A rabbi's vibrant, re-imagining of Judaism, with new looks at the meaning of teshuvah and tikkun, Jews as a tribe or family, and fresh approaches to sacred texts.
The Kabbalah of Light by Catherine Shainberg
A masterwork from the lineage holder for the Kabbalah of Light offering 160 imagery exercises for delving deep into one's subconscious and finding ways to apply what is learned there to daily life.
Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide by Adam Bucko
An invitation, conveyed through personal stories, wisdom teachings, scriptural insights, and contemplative practices, to embrace our pain as a path to transformation.
Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya
A philosopher's assertion that meaning is found in the moments of life in our unpredictable, ultimately senseless, world.
Living a Committed Life by Lynne Twist
An inspiring map to discovering the meaning and purpose of your life.
Love Is Everything by Andrew Harvey (trans.)
A year's worth of daily readings from Hadewijch of Antwerp, a thirteenth century Beguine and mystic who focused her writing on transformation through Love.
Make Every Move a Meditation by Nita Sweeney
Suggestions of physical movements and exercises that can be combined with a mindfulness practice.
Making Peace with Death and Dying by Judith Johnson
A caring and intelligent book of practices for understanding death and end of life.
Maxims for Mutuality by Philip Cunningham
A helpful study tool for Christians willing to be sensitized to how Catholic teaching and liturgy can be anti-Jewish.
Meditations with Cows by Shreve Stockton
A beautiful written and illustrated memoir about species-to-species love, the modern food system, western ranch life, and global warming.
The Night is Long but Light Comes in the Morning by Catherine Meeks
Meditations, intended for white people, from a Black woman who has spent her lifetime working in the field of racial healing.
On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg
A rabbi's teachings on forgiveness as requiring justice that involves repair, making amends, and meaningful change.
Open Wide My Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr
A journal by the Benedictine sister Macrina Wiederkehr filled with short introspective reflections on her yearning for God and to love radically.
The Path of Aliveness by Chrisitan Dillo
Meaningful instructions and clarifications combining everyday practicality with attentiveness to Zen texts and classic Zen and Quigong teachings.
Peace is a Doing Word by Barbara Glasson
Spiritual practices for making “peace” a verb in your life.
The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse by Kaveh Akbar (editor)
A startling and stimulating collection of poems from poets of many spiritual traditions as well as agnostics, Nones, Earth-lovers, and humanists, with a fine sampling of mystics.
Pilgrimage to the Museum by Stephen F. Auth
A beautiful tour of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art paying special attention to iconography and symbols relating to God.
Poetry Unbound by Pádraig Ó Tuama
A collection of poems from living poets plus commentaries on how each answers basic questions about why we are alive.
Practice of the Presence by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Nicolas Herman, Carmen Acevedo Butcher
A fresh translation of one of the classic works of Christian spirituality about the brother who showed how to love God in the simplest, most ordinary ways.
Ritual by Dimitris Xygalatas
An exploration of what ritual is and means in our lives during a wide variety of occasions.
Roar Like a Goddess by Acharya Shunya
A blend of Hindu wisdom and self-help advice illustrating how the divine feminine in the form of Hindu goddesses are exemplars for women today.
Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong
An urgent plea to redeem ourselves and our world because nature is sacred and holy.
Sacred Sendoffs by Sarah A. Bowen
A guide to honoring creatures, wild and domesticated, now and at their time of death.
Sonorous Desert by Kim Haines-Eitzen
Accounts of listening to what reverberates when we are quiet from experiences in the Arizona desert and the writings of the desert hermits of Christian antiquity.
Surviving Storms by Mark Nepo
A multidimensional overview of the storms in our time and the spiritual practices and attitudes needed to help us face them.
Tuesdays in Jail by Tina Welling
A memoir showing how we’re all imprisoned by something from a woman who taught journaling to prisoners.
The Way of Love by Michael Leach, Doris Goodenough, Maria Angelini
An anthology of stories, essays, and poems by spiritual writers from many traditions on finding occasions for loving more completely right where you are.
The Way of the Empath by Elaine Clayton
A welcome guide on how to cultivate your sensitivity to see, hear, and bring healing to others.
We Need to Build by Eboo Patel
Inspiration and plans from an interfaith organizer for creating an America that values religious diversity and pluralism.
What Makes Us Human? By Iain S. Thomas, Jasmine Wang, GPT-3
A Q&A session with an Artificial Intelligence processor that has been fed the texts of the world religious scriptures and other sources and has synthesized the world’s spiritual wisdom.
Daddy Speaks Love by Leah Henderson
Reflections on the bond between fathers and children, building a more compassionate world.
Here by Laura Alary
A wide-ranging tour through time, space, and questions to help a little girl find her bearings and discover ways to help on planet Earth.
Little Houses by Kevin Henkes
A seaside story that sparks spontaneous wonder and helps build it into a lifelong practice.
Love in the Library by Maggie Tokunda-Hall
A heart-stirring book about love flourishing even in the unjust conditions of an incarceration camp.
Night on the Sand
by Monica Mayper
A story about two refugees who find that mutual sharing and caring provide vital support amid catastrophic displacement.
One Thursday Afternoon by Barbara DiLorenzo
Wisdom about recovery from school lockdown drills.
Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free by Alice Faye Duncan
The quest for freedom, seen through the eyes of the leader of the movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie
A love-permeated ode and celebration of indigenous ways.
A Synagogue Just Like Home by Alice Blumenthal McGinty
An endearing story about hospitality as a shared practice.
Zen & the Ten Oxherding Pictures by Demi
Teachings about the quest for enlightenment that leads to bestowing bliss on others.