Book picks similar to
The Headmaster's Papers by Richard A. Hawley


fiction
epistolary-fiction
leisure-personal-interest
acanned

Dear Mr. Knightley


Katherine Reay - 2013
    Knightley is a contemporary epistolary novel with a delightful dash of Jane Austen.Samantha Moore survived years of darkness in the foster care system by hiding behind her favorite characters in literature, even adopting their very words. Her fictional friends give her an identity, albeit a borrowed one. But most importantly, they protect her from revealing her true self and encountering more pain.After college, Samantha receives an extraordinary opportunity. The anonymous “Mr. Knightley” offers her a full scholarship to earn her graduate degree at the prestigious Medill School of Journalism. The sole condition is that Sam write to Mr. Knightley regularly to keep him apprised of her progress.As Sam’s true identity begins to reveal itself through her letters, her heart begins to soften to those around her—a damaged teenager and fellow inhabitant of Grace House, her classmates at Medill, and, most powerfully, successful novelist Alex Powell. But just as Sam finally begins to trust, she learns that Alex has secrets of his own—secrets that, for better or for worse, make it impossible for Sam to hide behind either her characters or her letters.

Island of Secrets


Tammie Clarke Gibbs - 2010
    Everyone thought the man was crazy.Shane Alexander was determined to prove to the world that his family wasn't crazy... That HE wasn't crazy.It was working...Until he made one mistake...that would change his life forever...and force him to question his own sanity.Something was missing from Lila Fitzpatrick's life...So doing a friend a favor...and pretending to be someone else for a day seemed like a good idea at the time.Then she finds a warning note...from hundreds of years BEFORE she was born.And then if that wasn't bad enough...She met HIM...TWICE!For centuries a force has kept them apart...But, will Love be enough to finally keep them together...Or will history repeat itself? A Time Travel- A Love Story filled with Suspense-A Mystery that will keep you guessing til the end... Former Georgia Author of the Year Nominee, Tammie Clarke Gibbs has crafted a sweeping new time travel with the old-fashioned appeal of your favorite Gothic Novel. It will keep you guessing. This is one roller-coaster ride you won’t want to miss.

The Road


Cormac McCarthy - 2006
    Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Skinny Legs and All


Tom Robbins - 1990
    This is a gutsy, fun-loving, and provocative novel in which a bean can philosophises, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine.

The Artist of the Missing


Paul La Farge - 1999
    He begins working as a washer of robes at a hotel for itinerant judges. There he meets and falls in love with Prudence, a forensic photographer whose pictures reveal the secrets of the dead.When Prudence disappears, Frank sets out in search of her, a quest that leads him into the shadowy world of a revolutionary salon, then to prison, and finally to discover the city's strange secrets and the secrets of his own heart.A haunting novel that recalls the early work of Paul Auster and Steven Millhauser, The Artist of the Missing is a stunning debut, both a richly imagined evocation of another world and a piercing examination of the mystery of love, and beautifully illustrated by the acclaimed artist Stephen Alcorn.A visionary novel about love, loss, imagination, and despair.

Serendipity


Diane Darcy - 2011
    He's already as unhappy as he is obnoxious. What he doesn't realize is that his life is about to reach a new low. His boss is ready to fire him and his wife to leave him. When a disturbing stranger asks for his New Year's resolutions at a party, Sam throws everyone into hysterical laughter when he blurts out, "I want the body of an athlete and I want everyone to respect me." At midnight the stranger slaps him on the back, Sam has a sharp pain in his chest, and for the entire year, he cannot do anything that violates his New Year's resolutions. Hilarity follows as family, friends, enemies and co-workers try and figure out what the world happened to Sam. And while Sam eventually figures out what his problem is, it takes him a while longer to realize exactly what he needs to do about it. # OF PAGESApproximately 325 pages. OTHER BOOKS BY DIANE DARCY:Serendipity, She’s Just Right, Once in a Blue Moon, The Christmas Star, A Penny for Your Thoughts.

Faust


Robert Nye - 1980
    Johann Fausten dem wietbeschreyen Zauberer und Schwartzkunstler, or History of Dr John Faust the notorious Magician and Necromancer, as written by his familiar servant and disciple Christopher wagner, now for the first time Englished from the Low German.

From The Storm


Adrian J. Walker - 2012
    Lost, feverish and caught in a freak snowstorm, he finds refuge in a lonely mountain farm where he stumbles upon a young girl’s diary from eighty years before. Claudette tells of farm life disrupted by a blizzard and the arrival of a stranger with a terrible injury. With her father sick, the eight-year-old chronicles her struggle to look after the farm, and its unwanted guest, alone.Present day London. Joseph Martin has screwed up. Once he was a lethal assassin, the best gun-for-hire. Now, in his autumn years, even he has to admit he is losing it. His failing skills have landed him in trouble with a dangerous client. Only the successful completion of an eerily familiar mission can save his skin; a mission which takes him into deepest Asia, where he must face a past he has long tried to forget.He’s not the only one on the road in Asia. London city boy Ashley Gritten is travelling. Shedding the challenges of his privileged life in Kensington, he’s off to ‘find himself’ in the drugs, girls and debauchery of the backpacker trail. But something else finds him. Something much, much worse.Who would have thought that a rich kid and an ageing hit man would have so much in common? And what does all of this have to do with Elmo, a pianist on his death bed in Venice?From The Storm is a dark and humorous story of how selves are lost and lives are found.

The Magician's Assistant


Ann Patchett - 1997
    In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick; a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well. Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine's life and set her on an adventure of unraveling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her.

Prince of Lost Places


Kathy Hepinstall - 2003
    After a child is killed at Duncan's school, Martha decides that she must protect him from the world and from the constant, unnameable dangers that plague parents and their children. So late one night, she kidnaps him and takes him to a cave near the Rio Grande River to live, hidden and isolated. When her hideout is discovered by a strange man, Martha is wary and suspicious, but slowly begins to trust him with her son-never realizing that this man is a detective sent by her husband to bring her back home. As the fiercely protective mother and the detective fall in love, they move ever closer to a final confrontation, a terrible choice, and the revelation of Martha's devastating secret. Full of haunting atmosphere and seductive tension, Prince of Lost Places is a stirring tale that reaffirms Kathy Hepinstall as a rising talent of psychological suspense.

Fifth Business


Robertson Davies - 1970
    As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

Wolf Boy


Evan Kuhlman - 2006
    Nothing, in short, to signify the deep change that each member of the Harrelson household will undergo. Parents Gene and Helen turn away from each other and look inward, losing themselves in private fantasies. Ten-year-old Crispy devises elaborate strategies for her escape from the suffocating clutch of the Harrelson home and into the waiting arms of pop star Marky Mark.But the heart of this family portrait is younger brother Stephen, who, along with his quirky and creative friend Nicole, crafts an alternative reality in which their comic book hero, Wolf Boy, battles the forces of evil, champions the powers of good, and fights to keep his family intact. Through Wolf Boy, Stephen finds an outlet for his grief and a concrete expression for his place in a family spiraling out of control and for all the natural yearnings and hopes of a typical thirteen-year-old. Wolf Boy’s adventures are featured throughout the book, introducing a graphic-novel subplot that adds humor and visual interest and stretches the limits of the conventional novel.With warmth, humor, hope, and empathy, Evan Kuhlman’s debut novel is truly unforgettable and signals a fresh new voice in today’s fiction.

Growing Up Again


Catriona McCloud - 2007
    Nearly 40, she's in a marriage that has stalled with a mother-in-law she despises. Before Janie can make the final step toward divorce, her fate is taken out of her hands. Janie wakes up in her old bedroom and finds it just as it was in her teens. She stumbles downstairs to the kitchen where her mother greets her, looking radiantly young. But it isn't until Janie looks in the mirror, to be confronted by her 15 year old self, sporting the most diabolical 80s perm, that the reality of her situation sinks in. For a woman who scoffs at anything science can't prove, being swept back decades in time is a particularly ironic twist. She's gone back to 1981 and all the signs suggest that it's a one-way trip. But there's an upside—Janie has the chance to make her life turn out the way she wanted it. She's determined to help her parents, make her fortune, and do some good in the world, starting with saving Lady Diana Spencer from her fate. But things don't quite go to plan and pretty soon Janie realizes that even second time around, nothing is guaranteed. Clever and compassionate, this laugh-out-loud novel speculates the possibilities if you could turn back the clock and be given a second chance.

Sweet Shattered Dreams


Stanley Gordon West - 2005
    Then, just when he's convinced his life has passed him by, Sonny, by a stroke of fate, is given a second chance at living. Can he get it right?  Will he be able to evade the grinding loneliness that stalks him? Will he find a way to overcome the unbearable regret that haunts him? Will he ever risk loving again, to find someone with no good-byes in her heart? And, most of all, will he become the man he always could have been?

Guardians of the Garden (Guardians Book I)


Theresa Pocock
    At least there she would be free from the garden’s magic, free to lead her own life, and free to never again think about ancient apples, or duty, or life unending. Seth Johnson's sister is losing her battle with cancer, and his parents seem to have given up on trying to save her. He cannot let her die. He will do anything to stop it including cutting a deal with a mercenary. Neither Seth nor Miriam want to be caught up in the tide of fate and feelings destined for them, but with such harshly opposing goals their worlds are bound to collide. If Miriam and Seth cannot find a way to have faith in each other this will end with the death of a beloved sister, a destroyed relationship, and the secret of immortality revealed to a pre-apocalyptic world.Pocock takes her readers to a land where myth, folklore and reality merge, where love is strong, fear runs deep, and the end of the world is coming.