Durkheim, Emile, and John Al Spaulding, Suicide, Free Press, 1997.

The authors present the subject from a sociological perspective, offering a statistical analysis of the types of people who commit suicide.

Jamison, Kay Redfield, Night Falls: Understanding Suicide, Vintage, 2000.

Redfield, a Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor, focuses on the reasons for and the methods used in committing suicide and the treatment of suicidal tendencies.

Marino, Gordon, ed., Basic Writings of Existentialism, Modern Library, 2004.

Marino collected instructive essays on the subject from the most important philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Camus.

Wilson, Andrew, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, Bloomsbury, 2003.

Wilson draws from Highsmith’s journals and letters as well as interviews with those who knew her in his account of her complex personality and her life.