Book picks similar to
Shut Up/Look Pretty by Lauren Becker
short-stories
feminism
novels-tangible
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The Yes Factor
Erin Spencer - 2020
Bex just wants to stay in bed with Outlander.
With 40 right around the corner, divorced single mom Bex is too busy being a chauffeur for her teenage daughter to bother swiping for dates. Her best friend Liv, who is married to the supposedly perfect man, swoops in from London on a mission to get Bex out of her own bed and in to someone else's. Liv pushes Bex into a week-long whirlwind of dates, awkward kisses and missed connections.What could possibly go wrong when Bex agrees to Liv's harebrained scheme of saying Yes to every possible suitor? And why is Liv so intent on fixing Bex's love life, or lack thereof? Just what do you find out when all of your no's turn into The Yes Factor?
The Unwrapping of Theodora Quirke
Caroline Smailes - 2020
It's bad enough that she has to work on Christmas Eve but now there's a drunk bloke dressed as Santa and claiming to be St Nick hanging around outside her flat. Given he's professing to be the giver of Christmas miracles and nearly 2000 years old, she's wary.Things get even more weird when St Nick insists he's there to save Theo. And with the next St Nicholas Day somehow fast approaching, he's even got a plan that'll change her life forever.It all seems pretty straightforward, apart for one awkward fact:Theodora Quirke doesn't actually need saving.
Queen of Spades
Michael Shou-Yung Shum - 2017
With a breathtaking climax that rivals the best Hong Kong gambling movies, Michael Shou-Yung Shum's debut novel delivers the thrilling highs and lows that come when we cede control of our futures to the roll of the dice and the turn of a card.Finalist for Foreword Reviews 2017 Indie Literary Book of the Year
The Pain Tree
Olive Senior - 2015
“Coal” is a realist story set in the war years and depression that followed as folks try to find a new place in the world. Senior’s trademark children awakening to self-awareness and to the hypocrisy of adults are here too, from the heartbreaking “Moonlight” and “Silent” to the girls in “Lollipop” and “A Father Like That” who learn to confront loneliness and vulnerability with attitude.
The Wrong Heaven
Amy Bonnaffons - 2018
With a style that blends humor and sincerity in such strange, perfect ratios, Bonnaffons reveals the mysteries inside of us, just waiting to make themselves known. The Wrong Heaven, so wondrous, will alter you in all the necessary ways." —Kevin WilsonIn The Wrong Heaven, anything is possible: bodies can transform, inanimate objects come to life, angels appear and disappear.Bonnaffons draws us into a delightfully strange universe, in which her conflicted characters seek to solve their sexual and spiritual dilemmas in all the wrong places. The title story's heroine reckons with grief while arguing with loquacious Jesus and Mary lawn ornaments that come to life when she plugs them in. In "Horse," we enter a world in which women transform themselves into animals through a series of medical injections. In "Alternate," a young woman convinces herself that all she needs to revive a stagnant relationship is the perfect poster of the Dalai Lama.While some of the worlds to which Bonnaffons transports us are more recognizable than others, all of them uncover the mysteries beneath the mundane surfaces of our lives. Enormously funny, boldly inventive, and as provocative as they are deeply affecting, these stories lay bare the heart of our deepest longings.
The New York Stories of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton - 1934
Her Manhattan is a city of well-appointed drawing rooms, hansoms and broughams, all-night cotillions, and resplendent Fifth Avenue flats. Bishops’ nieces mingle with bachelor industrialists; respectable wives turn into excellent mistresses. All are governed by a code of behavior as rigid as it is precarious. What fascinates Wharton are the points of weakness in the structure of Old New York: the artists and writers at its fringes, the free-love advocates testing its limits, the widows and divorcées struggling to hold their own.The New York Stories of Edith Wharton gathers twenty stories of the city, written over the course of Wharton’s career. From her first published story, “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” to one of her last and most celebrated, “Roman Fever,” this new collection charts the growth of an American master and enriches our understanding of the central themes of her work, among them the meaning of marriage, the struggle for artistic integrity, the bonds between parent and child, and the plight of the aged. Illuminated by Roxana Robinson’s Introduction, these stories showcase Wharton’s astonishing insight into the turbulent inner lives of the men and women caught up in a rapidly changing society.
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women
Alex Dally MacFarlaneNatalia Theodoridou - 2014
This anthology showcases the most exceptional SF stories written by women in recent decades, from classic stars Ursula K. Le Guin and Angélica Gorodischer; science fiction greats Karen Joy Fowler and Nancy Kress; new award-winning talents Elizabeth Bear, Nnedi Okorafor and Aliette de Bodard; and many more.Contents:Girl hours / Sofia Samatar --Excerpt from a letter by a social-realist Aswang / Kristin Mandigma --Somadeva: a sky river sutra / Vandana Singh --The queen of Erewon / Lucy Sussex --Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day / Tori Truslow --Spider the artist / Nnedi Okorafor --The science of herself / Karen Joy Fowler --The other graces / Alice Sola Kim --Boojum / Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette --The eleven holy numbers of the mechanical soul / Natalia Theodoridou --Mountain ways / Ursula K. Le Guin --Tan-Tan and Dry Bone / Nalo Hopkinson --The four generations of Chang E / Zen Cho --Stay thy flight / Élisabeth Vonarburg --Astrophilia / Carrie Vaughan --Invisible planets / Hao Jingfang --On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric star charts, post apocalypse / Nicole Kornher-Stace --Valentines / Shira Lipkin --Dancing in the shadow of the once / Rochita Loenen-Ruiz --Ej-Es / Nancy Kress --The cartographer wasps and the anarchist bees / E. Lily Yu --The death of Sugar Daddy / Toiya Kristen Finley --Enyo-Enyo / Kameron Hurley --Semiramis / Genevieve Valentine --Immersion / Aliette de Bogard --Down the wall / Greer Gilman --Sing / Karin Tidbeck --Good boy / Nisi Shwal --The second card of the Major Arcana / Thoraiya Dyer --A short encyclopedia of lunar seas / Ekaterina Sedia --Vector / Benjanun Sriduangkaew --Concerning the unchecked growth of cities / Angélica Gorodischer --The radiant car thy sparrows drew / Catherynne M. Valente.
Motherest
Kristen Iskandrian - 2017
A new college student, she is caught between the broken home she leaves behind and the wilderness of campus life. What she needs most is her mother, who has seemingly disappeared, and her brother, who left the family tragically a few years prior.As Agnes falls into new romance, mines female friendships for intimacy, and struggles to find her footing, she writes letters to her mother, both to conjure a closeness they never had and to try to translate her experiences to herself. When she finds out she is pregnant, Agnes begins to contend with what it means to be a mother and, in some ways, what it means to be your own mother.
Daughters of Copper Woman
Anne Cameron - 1984
Now comes a new edition that includes many pieces cut from the original as well as fresh material added by the author. Here finally, after twenty-two years of gathering dust, is the complete version of the groundbreaking bestseller.In this, her best-loved work, Anne Cameron has created a timeless retelling of northwest coast Native myths that together create a sublime image of the social and spiritual power of woman. Cameron weaves together the lives of legendary and imaginary characters, creating a work of fiction with an intensity of style matched by the power of its subject.
The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You: Stories
Maurice Carlos Ruffin - 2021
These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.In "Beg Borrow Steal," a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after just coming home from prison; in "Ghetto University," a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in "Before I Let You Go," a woman who's been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in "Fast Hands, Fast Feet," an Army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in "Mercury Forges," a flash fiction piece among several in the collection, a group of men hurriedly make their way to a home where an elderly gentleman lives, trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story, a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter, trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian.
The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories
Ayse Papatya Bucak - 2019
Examining themes of identity, othering, and self-determination, The Trojan War Museum strives to bring light to the darkest corners of ourselves and our histories.
Middle Men: Stories
Jim Gavin - 2013
In "Play the Man" a high-school basketball player aspires to a college scholarship, in "Elephant Doors", a production assistant on a game show moonlights as a stand-up comedian, and in the collection’s last story, the immensely moving “Costello”, a middle-aged plumbing supplies salesman comes to terms with the death of his wife. The men in Gavin’s stories all find themselves stuck somewhere in the middle, caught half way between their dreams and the often crushing reality of their lives. A work of profound humanity that pairs moments of high comedy with searing truths about life’s missed opportunities, Middle Men brings to life a series of unforgettable characters learning what it means to love and work and be in the world as a man, and it offers our first look at a gifted writer who has just begun teaching us the tools of his trade.
Pretty;
Amber Lacie - 2016
Will they be able to build with the pieces of their hearts they have left, or will their love crumble and fall, leaving them both completely shattered?Author's Note: The novel contains adult situations that are meant for 18+ and graphic situations such as rape, abuse (including sexual), neglect, suicide and drug abuse.
The Heebie-Jeebie Girl
Susan Petrone - 2020
Between the closing of the city's largest steel mill and the worst blizzard in more than 40 years, the table is set for remarkable change. Unemployed steel worker Bobby Wayland is trying hard to help his family and still pay for his wedding, but the only solution he can think of involves breaking the law. On the other side of town, a little girl named Hope is keeping a big secret, one she won't even share with her Great Uncle Joe―she can make things move without touching them. Watching over both of them is the city herself, and she has something to say and something to do about all of this.The Heebie-Jeebie Girl is the story of an era ending and the uncertainty that awakens. It's the story of what happens when the unconscionable meets the improbable. It's the story of dreams deferred, dreams devoured, and dreams dawning. It is likely to be the most distinctive novel you read this year, but it will startle you with its familiarity. Author Susan Petrone has created an unforgettable tale of family, redemption, and magic.
Women Like Us
Jason Pomerance - 2016
But after her marriage to Andrew fell apart, she ceded most of the raising of the baby to her mother-in-law, the very opinionated Edith Vale, a woman as formidable and steely as her stiff blond bouffant, the veritable helmet that helps her soldier through life. Now, after letting Henry drift away, Susan is determined to make things right, but just as mother and son seem to make headway after embarking on a cross-country road-trip, things take a darker turn. When the family reconvenes in California, everybody must fight to find humor and courage in the face of a situation that threatens to change them all forever.