Book picks similar to
A Body at Rest by Susan Petrone


fiction
austen-inspired-not-yet-read
austentatious
contemporary-fiction

Don't Forget to Call Your Mama...I Wish I Could Call Mine


Lewis Grizzard - 1991
    In this book, Grizzard turns his attention to his mother, and to all mothers, casting a loving, comic eye toward the most important and defining relationship of all.

Storm Clouds of Love


Melanie Schertz - 2012
    What would happen if Darcy's departure was postponed due to a storm, a storm which has caused Elizabeth to lose her way back to Hunsford Parish and safety?

The Romance Reader's Guide to Life


Sharon Pywell - 2017
    As her mother not unkindly told her, she was never going to grow up to be a great beauty. Her glamorous sister, Lilly, moved easily through the world, a parade of handsome men in pursuit. Her brother didn’t want a girl joining his group of friends. And their small town of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world -- often this meant her mother, her brother, and the town librarian who wanted to keep her away from the Dangerous Books she really wanted to read.But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and Neave discovers a world of passion, love, and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grown up she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much.Neave finds herself rereading The Pirate Lover more than she ever would have expected because as she gets older, life does not follow the romances she gobbled up as a child. When Neave and Lilly are about to realize their professional dream, Lilly suddenly disappears. Neave must put her beloved books down and take center stage, something she has been running from her entire life. And she must figure out what happened to Lilly – and if she’s next. Who Neave turns to help her makes Sharon Pywell's The Romance Reader's Guide to Life one of the most original, entertaining, exciting, and chilling novels you will read this year.

From Longbourn to Pemberley


Elizabeth Ann West - 2015
    From Longbourn to Pemberley traces the first year of their lives, as each daughter of Robert Bennet fights for her own happily ever after. This is a boxed set of the previously published A Winter Wrong, A Spring Sentiment, A Summer Shame, and An Autumn Accord designed specifically for readers who want to sit down and enjoy the story as one novel as the novellas were planned to fulfill a story arc this way.

The Book of Speculation


Erika Swyler - 2015
    His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival.One June day, an old book arrives on Simon's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of "mermaids" in Simon's family have drowned--always on July 24, which is only weeks away.As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save Enola?In the tradition of Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, The Book of Speculation--with two-color illustrations by the author--is Erika Swyler's moving debut novel about the power of books, family, and magic.

The Nunnery: A Pride and Prejudice Variation


Anne Morris - 2018
     Colonel Fitzwilliam arrives. Mr. Collins invites Lady Catherine. And Bingley requests that Caroline keeps house, then she brings a friend. With the weather keeping everybody in the village, intrigues begin... With its neat blend of drama and humour, The Nunnery will have you transfixed and laughing simultaneously throughout. Anne Morris is popular on fan fiction sites for her unique blending of genres whilst penning solid variations of the famed Pride and Prejudice story.

Flying Fossils (Women of Fossil Ridge Book 1)


Lynne Gentry - 2018
    For twenty-five years, they've gone their separate ways and lived separate lives. But when Sara's fall breaks her hip and leaves her unable to care for herself, her daughter is forced to return to Texas. Charlotte’s short-term care-giving plan is dashed when she realizes her difficult mother needs long-term care. While Sara struggles to regain her independence, Charlotte grapples with the impossible task of juggling a high-pressure job, a rebellious teenage daughter, and a slightly demented mother. The Women of Fossil Ridge Series is a heartwarming addition to the small town, generational series of favorite authors like Ann B. Ross, Jan Karon, and Beth Hoffman. Gentry’s small-town sagas are a masterful peek into what it takes to resuscitate a mother-daughter relationship. Series sparkles with humor, heart, and southern charm. ~Amazon Reviewer Gentry is one to watch. ~RT Reviews Books in the Women of Fossil Ridge series: #1 Flying Fossils #2 Finally Free #3 First Frost If you loved FLYING FOSSILS, you'll enjoy Gentry's Mt. Hope Southern Adventures series. Out of the dust of West Texas comes another set of heartwarming books that will have you laughing until you cry. Books in Mt. Hope Southern Adventures series: #1 Walking Shoes #2 Shoes to Fill #3 Dancing Shoes #4 Baby Shoes

God Plays Favorites


Charlie Carillo - 2012
    An Ivy League graduate who grew up on Park Avenue takes his first job at the most sensational tabloid newspaper in New York City - and soon finds himself writing promotional stories about a cash giveaway contest intended to keep the paper alive! Jack Stone is not your everyday reporter, and his real education doesn’t begin in earnest until he hooks up with streetwise photographer Vinnie Corcora to do stories about the contest winners - a cast of characters who bring new meaning to "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It’s a wild ride that defies expectations and stereotypes, and along the way Jack earns a Ph.D in the human condition - while learning the true meaning of love, loyalty and friendship.

Sabbath Creek


Judson Mitcham - 2004
    Cerebral and sensitive, Lewis is forced to confront the latent fears-scars left from the emotional abuse of an alcoholic father and the lack of comfort from a preoccupied mother- that crowd his interior existence.At the heart of the journey, and of the novel itself, is Truman Stroud, the quick-witted, cantankerous, ninety-three-year-old black owner of the crumbling Sabbath Creek Motor Court, where Lewis and his mother are stranded by car trouble. Despite his prickly personality and the considerable burden of his own tragedies, Stroud becomes the boy's best hope for a father figure, as he teaches Lewis the secrets of baseball and the secrets of life.This compassionate, powerful work of fiction travels from the ruined landscape of south Georgia and takes us all the way through the ruined landscape of a broken heart.

All We Left Unsaid


Natalie K. Martin - 2021
    As different as they are, together they’re the perfect balance, with Jess’s calm elegance complementing Ivy’s spirit and thirst for adventure.But there is one thing—one person—they can’t share: Ivy’s friend, Finn. And when Jess falls for him, the betrayal cuts deep, forming a chasm between the two sisters that widens with every passing day…Years after that fateful falling-out, Jess receives a call that changes everything and throws her on a journey following in her wilder sister’s footsteps, to discover what happened to Ivy. But is it ever too late to say you’re sorry?

Shanghai Girl


Vivian Yang - 2001
    Shan Hai Gaaru". This 2011 U.S. edition features an excerpt of the author’s WNYC Leonard Lopate Essay Contest-winning new novel "Memoirs of a Eurasian". In the post-Cultural Revolution Shanghai of 1984, university senior Sha-fei Hong longs to study in the U.S. for graduate school, ostensibly to pursue the American Dream, but partly to escape her sexually-harassing Communist cadre stepfather. She meets the visiting Chinese-American businessman Gordon Lou, who has political ambitions and ties to the Chinatown underworld in the U.S. He takes Sha-fei to the American Consulate in Shanghai to look into studying in America. There, Sha-fei meets the intern Edward Cook, a young, Caucasian American lawyer who has a strong preference for all things Asian. Within a year, these three people of entirely different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds cross paths in New York. Value systems and self-interests clash. The curtain falls on a dramatic stage of ambition, sex, intrigue, and murder.

Skyfall


Saba Karim Khan - 2020
    Despite the worst of humanity every day – her madrassa running father selling her mother's body and beating her sister – Rania remains the 'Troublemaker', unable to give up on her dreams.When an Indian filmmaker encourages her to enrol in a music contest that can take her to New York, her dreams take flight. But even as she wins the hearts of her listeners, a family secret threatens to bring her life in Heera Mandi back in sharp relief, upending the new life she has built for herself.From the oppressive walls of religious hypocrisy to the orange jumpsuits of American prisons, Skyfall is a tender, piercing debut that teaches us the strength of human endeavour and our desire for love in a time of hate.

My Former Heart


Cressida Connolly - 2011
    She thought she could even pinpoint the exact moment at which Iris had made up her mind to go, leaving her only child behind. Neither of them could have guessed then that they would never live together again.Spanning the second half of the last century, ‘My Former Heart’, Cressida Connolly’s mesmerising first novel, charts the lives of three generations of Iris’s family. Ruth will be deserted again, many years later, by a husband she loves, but not before she has had two children by him. She leaves London to live with her uncle, where she creates a new life for herself with another woman. And we follow the lives of her two children, trying to make a place for themselves in the world in the shadow of the family that precedes them.With its large cast of fascinating characters, this is an outstanding novel about families and their ability to adapt. It surely marks the beginning of a long career as a novelist for Cressida Connolly.

Bookclub-in-a-Box Discusses Cutting For Stone, the novel by Abraham Verghese


Marilyn Herbert - 2010
    The narrative begins in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when twin boys, Shiva and Marion, are born to a nun (who dies) and a surgeon (who runs away). The babies, conjoined at the head, are successfully separated immediately after birth. The original conjoinment and separation of the boys becomes the operating theme of the novel and we are given situation after situation in which to consider the concepts of fusion and partition. Bookclub-in-a-Box looks at all that Verghese provides: history (Ethiopia and Eritrea), medicine (blood and liver disease), psychology (the search for identity), sociology (human relationships) and philosophy (of both science and religion). The narrative's real facts and descriptions are especially interesting for their thematic implications. Every Bookclub-in-a-Box printed discussion guide includes complete coverage of the themes and symbols, writing style, and interesting background information on the novel and the author.

இடக்கை [Idakkkai ]


S. Ramakrishnan - 2016
    The Final Solitude exposes the injustice that prevailed during Emperor Aurangazeb's rule in a fictional small kingdom in eastern India, called satgargh. Interspersed with fantastical tales, this allegorical novel brings to light the torment and the trouble people faced during the lunatic king Pishada's fascist regime.