Aside from the books and articles in my “Notes on Sources” in An infinity of Little Hours (and the books the monks themselves read), these publications may be helpful: Selected Books by Carthusians:

• Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous classic spiritual work — by a Carthusian?)
• Meditations of Guigo I, Prior of the Charterhouse (short meditations by Guigo I, the Fifth Prior of the Grande Chartreuse)
• Where Silence is Praise (short meditations by Dom Augustine Guillerand)

Transitions from Religious to Secular life:

• Seminary: A Search (Paul Hendrickson’s superbly written autobiography of his seven years (age 14-21) in a Catholic seminary and what happened to the men he knew after Vatican II. — out of print, available in online bookstores).
• The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness (Karen Armstrong’s third autobiography which describes her life in the convent, her transition to secular life, and her life until 2004).
• Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns (a 2004 investigative report on the lives of nuns since the modernizations of Vatican II).

Classic Autobiographies of Two Women Contemplatives:

• The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
• The Life of Saint Teresa of Âvila by Herself.

Other:

• · Dakota, The Cloister Walk (Kathleen Norris – Norris’s introduction to and adoption of the Benedictine tradition)
• · The Golden String (Bede Griffiths – a Benedictine monk’s autobiography which addresses the connections between Christianity and Hinduism)
• · Beyond the Darkness: A Biography of Bede Griffiths(Shirley du Boulay)