Lisa Genova Books in Order

If you want her most iconic novel about Alzheimer’s: Still Alice
If you’re interested in work, family, and brain injury: Left Neglected
If you’re drawn to autism, grief, and healing friendships: Love Anthony
If you like high stakes family drama around inherited disease: Inside the O'Briens → Every Note Played
If you prefer brain science and mental health on the page: Remember → More or Less Maddy

Lisa Genova is an American neuroscientist and novelist who writes about what happens when the brain stops behaving the way we expect. She grew up in Waltham, Massachusetts, in a big Italian American family just outside Boston. Science and story have been in conversation for her ever since.

As a kid, she loved school and the feeling of figuring things out. Family life was loud, close, and grounded in everyday routines, but she was drawn to questions about how the mind works. That curiosity shaped the choices she made next.

At Bates College she studied biopsychology, graduating valedictorian, summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. From there she went on to Harvard, earning a PhD in neuroscience in 1998. Her early research work focused on the brain, addiction, and how experience can change neural circuits.

After graduate school, Genova worked in neuroscience labs and taught neuroanatomy, and for a time her life seemed set on a straightforward academic path.

That path changed when her grandmother developed Alzheimer’s disease. Genova saw how different the medical descriptions of the illness were from the lived experience of the woman she loved. She wanted a story that would let readers feel what it is like to live inside that diagnosis, not just observe it from the outside. Years later, as a new mother facing a divorce and a major career change, she decided to write that book herself.

The result was Still Alice, the story of a Harvard professor with early onset Alzheimer’s whose ordered life slowly unravels. Genova initially self published the novel after being turned down by agents and editors, then watched as word of mouth carried it to a major publisher and the bestseller lists. The book has reached readers around the world and was adapted into a film starring Julianne Moore, who won an Academy Award for her performance. That success gave Genova the freedom to keep exploring brain science through fiction.

Her next novels each take on a different neurological condition and the families around it. Left Neglected follows a driven executive whose traumatic brain injury forces her to notice the parts of her life she has been ignoring. Love Anthony moves between two women on Nantucket and the memory of Anthony, a nonverbal boy with autism. Inside the O’Briens centers on a Boston police officer and his adult children as they confront Huntington’s disease and the question of whether they want to know their genetic fate. In Every Note Played, a world class concert pianist with ALS and his estranged ex wife are brought back into each other’s lives by the demands of caregiving.

Genova has also written nonfiction. In Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting, she explains how memory is built, why forgetting is part of being human, and what we can realistically do to take better care of our brains. The book blends clear science with everyday examples so readers can see themselves in the research.

Her work has reached bestseller lists, earned advocacy and media awards, and taken her onto stages and into classrooms to talk about Alzheimer’s, memory, and brain health.

Genova now lives on Cape Cod with her family, writing near the water she once visited only on vacation. She still reads the scientific literature, but she is most interested in the questions that arise around a kitchen table or a hospital bed. In her books and talks, she keeps returning to the same core idea, that understanding the brain can deepen our empathy for one another.