Disability in Genre Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography
Books in a series are grouped together in a single entry if they feature disabled characters in the same (or similar) roles.
Abercrombie, Joe. The First Law trilogy (The Blade Itself, 2006; Before They are Hanged, 2007; Last Argument of Kings, 2008). Fantasy. Central character who is physically impaired and in constant pain after torture, another who is scarred and missing a finger. Numerous secondary and incidental characters who are scarred or disabled.
Abercrombie, Joe. Shattered Sea trilogy (Half a King, 2014; Half the World, 2015;
Half a War, 2015). Fantasy. Yarvi, a central character in all three novels, has a deformed hand. Thorn, the protagonist of Half the World, ends up scarred.
Adair, Cherry. In Too Deep. 2002. Romance. Hero has lost an eye.
Adams, Jennie. Once Upon a Time in Tarrula. 2011. Romance. Hero has a limp.
Albert, Annabeth. Connection Error. 2016. Romance, #gaymers series. One hero has ADHD, the other is an amputee veteran.
Aldiss, Brian. Finches of Mars. 2013. Science fiction. Humans have colonised Mars but children there are born stillborn or ‘malformed’.
Alexander, Bruce. Blind Justice. 1994. Crime, first Sir John Fielding mystery.
Features a visually impaired detective.
Anderson, Catherine. Phantom Waltz. 2001. Romance. Heroine is paraplegic, char-acter with intellectual impairment.
Anderson-Minshall, Diane, and Jacob Anderson-Minshall. Blind Leap. 2007. Crime, Blind Eye series. Features disabled detectives including a visually impaired character and a wheelchair user.
Baker, Fran. Seeing Stars. 1986. Romance. Hero is visually impaired and has some facial scarring.
Balogh, Mary. Red Rose. 1986. Romance. Heroine has a limp.
Balogh, Mary. The Devil’s Web. 1990. Romance, Web trilogy. War-wounded Allan Penworth reappears as a minor character, largely recovered from his injuries and with an artificial leg.
Balogh, Mary. Web of Love. 1990. Romance, Web trilogy. Secondary character Allan Penworth lost an eye and his leg from war wounds.
Balogh, Mary. The Secret Pearl. 1991. Romance, historical. Hero is scarred by war;
hero’s wife is consumptive.
Balogh, Mary. Dancing With Clara. 1994. Romance. Heroine is ‘crippled’ after a childhood illness, but is recovering by the end of the novel.
Balogh, Mary. Lord Carew’s Bride. 1995. Romance. Hero has a limp and a ‘twisted’
hand after a childhood accident.
Balogh, Mary. Silent Melody. 1997. Romance. Heroine is deaf and assumed to be mute; speaks her wedding vows at the end of the novel.
Balogh, Mary. One Night for Love. 1999. Romance. Hero and heroine are both phys-ically scarred by war.
Balogh, Mary. Slightly Married. 2003. Romance, first in Slightly series. Characters with physical and cognitive impairments appear in secondary roles.
Balogh, Mary. Slightly Scandalous. 2003. Romance, Slightly series. Secondary char-acter with a cognitive impairment.
Balogh, Mary. Slightly Sinful. 2004. Romance, Slightly series. Hero has amnesia for much of the novel; one secondary character has lost an eye.
Balogh, Mary. Simply Love. 2006. Romance, Simply quartet. Hero lost an eye and one arm in wartime torture.
Balogh, Mary. Simply Perfect. 2008. Romance, Simply quartet. Hero’s daughter is visually impaired.
Balogh, Mary. First Comes Marriage. 2009. Romance, first in Huxtable quintet. The deceased younger brother of one character had Down syndrome.
Balogh, Mary. The Proposal. 2012. Romance, first in Survivors’ Club series.
Heroine has a limp after an accident years earlier, hero was mentally ill after war trauma, minor characters with a range of impairments.
Balogh, Mary. The Arrangement. 2013. Romance, Survivors’ Club series. Hero is visually impaired.
Barclay, Alex. Blood Loss. 2012. Crime, first in Ren Bryce series. Protagonist is bipolar; a crime is committed at a former insane asylum.
Barker, Clive. Cabal: The Nightbreed. 1988. Horror. Protagonist is mentally ill;
exploration of insanity and monstrosity.
Baxter, Mary Lynn. Evening Hours. 2005. Romance. The heroine limps, is scarred, and has pain from a car accident in her teens.
Bear, Greg. Queen of Angels. 1990. Science fiction. Advances in the understanding of mental health have resulted in effective therapies for mental illness, but also created new forms of discrimination. New technology allows the wealthy to reshape their bodies.
Blake, Toni. Whisper Falls. 2011. Romance, contemporary. Heroine has Crohn’s disease.
Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. 1971. Horror. Demonic possession initially interpreted as mental illness, numerous secondary characters with impairments.
Bliss, Karina. Here Comes the Groom. 2011. Romance. Heroine’s grandmother has dementia, heroine has had a mastectomy, minor character who limps after war injuries.
Bolton, Sharon. A Dark and Twisted Tide. 2014. Crime, Lacey Flint. Significant secondary character with sirenomelia.
Bolton, S.J. Now You See Me. 2011. Crime, first in Lacey Flint series. Secondary character with burn scars and a missing ear.
Bolton, S.J. Dead Scared. 2012. Crime, Lacey Flint. Villains target students with mental health issues; central character with pain and mobility impairment.
Bolton, S.J. Like This, For Ever. 2013. Crime, Lacey Flint. A child with OCD is a major character, other disabled characters appear in minor roles.
Bradford, Laura. Storybook Dad. 2012. Romance. Heroine has been recently diag-nosed with MS; hero volunteers with an organisation supporting disabled people. Hero’s mother and another minor character are wheelchair users.
Britton, Pamela. The Wrangler. 2009. Romance. Heroine is losing her vision owing to a blood clot.
Brockmann, Suzanne. Frisco’s Kid. 1997. Romance. Navy SEAL hero has a mobility impairment.
Brown, Sandra. Unspeakable. 1998. Crime. Heroine is deaf, villain with a cognitive impairment.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Vorkosigan series. Science Fiction. 1986–. (The Warrior’s Apprentice, 1986; Brothers in Arms, 1989; The Vor Game, 1990; Mirror Dance, 1994; Cetaganda, 1996; Cryoburn, 2010; Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, 2016).
Protagonist Miles Vorkosigan is of short stature with a limp, hunched back, and brittle bones, though his bones are gradually replaced with synthetics in the course of the series. Novels from Brothers in Arms onwards features Miles’s clone, Mark, who is identical in appearance but does not have brittle bones.
Both characters experience forms of mental illness, and in later novels Miles has a seizure disorder.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Spirit Ring. 1992. Fantasy. Secondary character who is mad.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Curse of Chalion. 2001. Fantasy. Protagonist is physi-cally and psychologiphysi-cally scarred; secondary character who is mad; another who is mute.
Burrows, Annie. Captain Fawley’s Innocent Bride. 2008. Romance. Hero has facial scarring and his hand and lower leg have been amputated.
Cadigan, Pat. Mindplayers. 1987. Science fiction. Set in a future society where forms of mental illness are licensed and traded.
Card, Orson Scott. Xenocide. 1991. Science fiction, Ender series. Central character with brain damage who is cured at the end of the novel; the people of the planet Path have obsessive-compulsive disorder; minor character with pros-thetic vision.
Chase, Loretta. Miss Wonderful. 2004. Romance. Hero is lame from war wounds.
Chesbro, George C. Shadow of a Broken Man. 1977. Crime, ‘Mongo’ series.
Protagonist is a dwarf detective; another character suffers traumatic after-effects of torture.
Christie, Agatha. The Clocks. 1963. Crime, Hercule Poirot series. A dead man is found in the home of a visually impaired woman.
Clarke, Arthur C. Islands in the Sky. 1954. Science fiction. Features a lower-limb amputee who lives on a zero-gravity space station.
Cornwell, Patricia. Postmortem. 1990. Crime, first in Scarpetta series. Murderer has an enzyme defect which causes a distinctive smell.
Cornwell, Patricia. Cruel and Unusual. 1993. Crime, Scarpetta. Character scarred by bomb blast plays key role in the novel’s resolution; another has had his voice box removed after cancer. Brief appearance of character with Parkinson’s disease.
Cornwell, Patricia. Cause of Death. 1996. Crime, Scarpetta. Murder victim with a malformed penis; minor character with a knee brace.
Cornwell, Patricia. Hornet’s Nest. 1997. Crime, Andy Brazil series. Brief appear-ances by a male character with unspecified cognitive impairments and a female wheelchair user.
Cornwell, Patricia. Southern Cross. 1998. Crime, Andy Brazil. The major villain is described as a ‘special needs child’, one murder victim is a disabled woman.
Minor character who lost his foot and part of his hand in Vietnam and has spent time in mental hospitals.
Cornwell, Patricia. Black Notice. 1999. Crime, Scarpetta. Villain is Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, who has hypertrichosis and is disfigured.
Cornwell, Patricia. The Last Precinct. 2000. Crime, Scarpetta. Features Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.
Cornwell, Patricia. Blow Fly. 2003. Crime, Scarpetta. Features Jean-Baptiste Chandonne and a child who has been institutionalised due to self-harming.
Cornwell, Patricia. Trace. 2004. Crime, Scarpetta. Perpetrator has a respira-tory disease; secondary characters with various physical and psychological impairments.
Cornwell, Patricia. Scarpetta. 2008. Crime, Scarpetta. Victim has achondroplasia and a compulsive condition; suspect with achondroplasia.
Cornwell, Patricia. The Scarpetta Factor. 2009. Crime, Scarpetta. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne appears after surgery to normalise his appearance. Secondary villains include a character with a personality disorder and another with a hearing impairment.
Cornwell, Patricia. Dust. 2013. Crime, Scarpetta. Murderer has sensory processing disorder, Scarpetta’s mother has a hearing impairment.
Cornwell, Patricia. Flesh and Blood. 2014. Crime, Scarpetta. Secondary character has a facial deformity and the main perpetrator has been institutionalised for mental illness.
Cox, Connie. Christmas Eve Delivery. 2013. Romance. Hero has panic attacks after war experiences.
Cullinan, Heidi. A Private Gentleman. 2012. Romance. One hero has a stutter and is drug-addicted, the other has poor vision and suffers the after-effects of trauma. Various secondary and minor disabled characters.
Cullinan, Heidi. Carry the Ocean. 2015. Romance, The Roosevelt series. One hero is autistic, the other has depression and anxiety. Various secondary and minor disabled characters.
Creighton, Kathleen. Daredevil’s Run. 2008. Romance. Hero is paralysed after a spinal injury; heroine works with disabled people.
Cross, Ethan. Blind Justice. 2013. Crime. Protagonist is visually impaired, secondary character has a limp, and a minor character has Alzheimer’s.
Dailey, Janet. The Ivory Cane. 1977. Romance. Heroine has recently lost her sight.
Dare, Tessa. Three Nights With a Scoundrel. 2010. Romance. Heroine is deaf, hero’s mother was deaf, and there are brief references to signing communities.
Dart-Thornton, Cecilia. The Ill-Made Mute. 2001. Fantasy, first in Bitterbynde trilogy. Protagonist is mute, amnesiac, and facially disfigured.
Davis, Justine. Left at the Altar. 1994. Romance. Hero is a lower-leg amputee;
secondary character who is also an amputee.