Book picks similar to
Leonora by Arnold Bennett


classics
british-literature
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Nothing So Strange


James Hilton - 1947
    Mark Bradley in London she was only eighteen. She and her mother were both attracted by "Brad," and the situation thus engendered proved fateful, since it led to Brad's association with a great Viennese physicist and to his involvement in a tragic drama. But there was another drama, larger and less personal, that drew him into its widening orbit, a drama that became a secret and later an obsession.Probing yet protective, Jane's love makes the strong thread in a pattern of deeply moving and significant events—strange events, too—and yet, to quote Daniel Webster, there is often "nothing so strange" as the truth.Although the earlier scenes of Nothing So Strange are laid abroad, its outlook is American and its climax could only have taken place in America. It is as exciting and as human as anything Mr. Hilton has ever written.

Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure


John Cleland - 1748
    She soon escapes her fate for the loving arms of a wealthy young man, but misadventure and fate conspire to keep her from domestic bliss. Instead, Fanny discovers that sex need not be just for love; that it can be had for pleasure. She then sets out to explore those pleasures in as wide a variety as she can. With old men and young, and women as well; in positions of power, and situations where she has none; either watching or participating, Fanny's journey through the realms of sexual pleasure is a literary tour-de-force.

Booty for a Bad Man


Louis L'Amour - 1991
    Tell Sackett knew that gold spelled trouble faster than anything except a woman, and he had a lot of gold.  Problem was, none of it was his.  Tell was just delivering the gold for a fee.  The Coopers, a gang of bloodthirsty desperadoes who'd slit a man's throat for the silver filling in his teeth, were hot on his trail.So, the last thing Tell needed was Christine Mallory, a pretty, stuck-up city woman, to slow him down.  Taking her on could easily cost Tell his life.  But it was that or leave her in the desert to die.  As Tell Sackett's father used to say, "Women are trouble."  Tell was about to learn what he meant.

Shadow Of Temptation: A Prequel To Margot Harris Mystery Series (Margot Harris Mysteries One - Shadow)


Nora Kane - 2021
    

The Pale Man


Julius Long - 1934
    He becomes obsessed with the another resident — a strange pale man who inexplicably moves from room to room. It's an eerie and extremely brief tale that can be consumed in less than 10 minutes — the perfect story for anyone looking for a quick way to get into the Halloween spirit. https://americanliterature.com/author...

The Way Things Are


E.M. Delafield - 1927
    . . 'Yes. It's only - I'm very fond of Alfred, ' said Laura, taking the plunge and temporarily unaware that almost all wives begin conversations about almost all husbands in precisely the same way."Laura has been married for seven years. On those occasions when an after-dinner snooze behind The Times seems preferable to her riveting conversation about their two small sons, Laura dismisses the notion that Alfred does not understand her, reflecting instead that they are what is called happily married. At thirty-four, Laura wonders if she's ever been in love -- a ridiculous thing to ask oneself. Then Duke Ayland enters her life and that vexing question refuses to remain unanswered . . . With Laura, beset by perplexing decisions about the supper menu, the difficulties of appeasing Nurse, and the necessity of maintaining face within the small village of Quinnerton, E.M. Delafield created her first "Provincial Lady." And in the poignancy of Laura's doubts about her marriage, she presents a dilemma which many women will recognise.

The Slaves of Solitude


Patrick Hamilton - 1947
    Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the terrors and rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach has retreated to the relative safety and stupefying boredom of the suburban town of Thames Lockdon, where she rents a room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Payne. There the savvy, sensible, decent, but all-too-meek Miss Roach endures the dinner-table interrogations of Mr. Thwaites and seeks to relieve her solitude by going out drinking and necking with a wayward American lieutenant. Life is almost bearable until Vicki Kugelmann, a seeming friend, moves into the adjacent room. That’s when Miss Roach’s troubles really start to begin.Recounting an epic battle of wills in the claustrophobic confines of the boarding house, Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, with a delightfully improbable heroine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.

Those Barren Leaves


Aldous Huxley - 1925
    Aldwinkle. Here, Mrs. Aldwinkle yearns to recapture the glories of the Italian Renaissance, but her guests ultimately fail to fulfill her naive expectations. Among her entourage are: a suffering poet and reluctant editor of the "Rabbit Fanciers' Gazette" who silently bears the widowed Mrs. Aldwinkle's desperate advances; a popular novelist who records every detail of her affair with another guest, the amorous Calamy, for future literary endeavors; and an aging sensualist philosopher who pursues a wealthy yet mentally-disabled heiress. Stripping the houseguests of their pretensions, Huxley reveals the superficiality of the cultural elite. Deliciously satirical, Those Barren Leaves bites the hands of those who dare to posture or feign sophistication and is as comically fresh today as when first published.

A Kidnapped Santa Claus


L. Frank Baum - 1904
    Can Christmas be saved?

The Glimpses of the Moon


Edith Wharton - 1922
    They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than hamper each other. We both know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other might - in the way of opportunities, I mean". The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they're free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of errors that will charm all fans of Wharton's work.

Cometh Up As a Flower


Rhoda Broughton - 1867
    Nell is in love with one man, but marries another. The heroine's frank discussion of her sexual attraction to her lover, and her dispassionate evaluation of loveless marriage as a form of self-sale was criticized by many critics of the day; however, Cometh Up was one of Rhoda Broughton's most successful sensation novels and was widely read.

Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady - Volume 1


Samuel Richardson - 1748
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Smee: A Short Story


Alfred McClelland Burrage - 1927
    Smee is a crackling ghost story about a guest in a haunted house telling other visitors of the death of a young girl, years ago, playing a game of hide-and-seek.

The Diary of a Nobody


George Grossmith - 1889
    Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable choice of bride. Try as he might, he cannot avoid life's embarrassing mishaps. In the bumbling, absurd, yet ultimately endearing figure of Pooter, the Grossmiths created an immortal comic character and a superb satire on the snobberies of middle-class suburbia - one which also sends up late Victorian crazes for spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.

A Note in Music


Rosamond Lehmann - 1930
    At thirty-four she finds that her external life of dreary routine fails to match up to her lush, wistful and dreamy internal life. Norah, her energetic and chaotic friend, is equally settled in her own marriage to an irritable university professor.Then Hugh Miller and his sister Claire descend upon the quiet town. On all four, the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts an enchanting spell. And after their departure, life - having been violently disrupted - will never be quite the same again . . .