Book picks similar to
Padmavati: The Queen Tells Her Own Story by Sutapa Basu
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Charlotte
Helen Moffett - 2020
She is twenty-seven years old, unmarried, plain, and seemingly without ambition. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is angry at her for undervaluing herself. Yet the decision is the only way Charlotte knows to provide for her future, and marriage will propel her into a new world, of duty, marriage, children, grief and ultimately illicit love, and a kind of freedom.Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints of women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.
East of India
Erica Brown - 2018
When Nadine learns that the Indian woman she thought her nanny is, in fact, her mother, she rebels against her English father and he arranges for her to be wed to an Australian merchant many years older. She is whisked off to her new husband's plantation in Malaya but as the Second World War rages throughout the East, Nadine is taken captive by the Japanese. She is held at a camp in Sumatra with other women and forced to entertain the soldiers and satisfy their desires. In the most unlikely circumstances, Nadine finds an ally and protector in a Japanese—American major caught up in the war. The two bond over their conflicted identities and gradually fall in love. But can Nadine survive long enough to find happiness?
Don't miss this emotional and powerful saga about a woman's determination to beat the odds, perfect for fans of Renita D'Silva, Dinah Jefferies and Julia Gregson.
The Body
Stephen King - 1982
Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn’t offer much in the way of a future. A timeless exploration of the loneliness and isolation of young adulthood, Stephen King’s The Body is an iconic, unforgettable, coming-of-age story.
The Contortionist's Handbook
Craig Clevenger - 2002
In the face of his impending institutionalization, he continually reinvents himself to escape the legal and mental health authorities and to save himself from a life of incarceration. But running turns out to be costly. Vincent's clients in the L.A. underworld lose patience, the hospital evaluator may not be fooled by his story, and the only person in as much danger as himself is the woman who knows his real name.
Surviving Savannah
Patti CallahanPatti Callahan - 2021
Lewis.When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she's shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly can't resist the opportunity to try to solve some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the devastating night of its sinking.Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of eleven who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah's society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.
RoseBlood
A.G. Howard - 2017
RoseBlood is a Phantom of the Opera–inspired retelling in which Rune’s biggest talent—her voice—is also her biggest curse. Rune, whose voice has been compared to that of an angel, has a mysterious affliction linked to her talent that leaves her sick and drained at the end of every performance. Convinced creative direction will cure her, her mother ships her off to a French boarding school for the arts, rumored to have a haunted past. Shortly after arriving at RoseBlood conservatory, Rune starts to believe something otherworldly is indeed afoot. The mystery boy she’s seen frequenting the graveyard beside the opera house doesn’t have any classes at the school, and vanishes almost as quickly as he appears. When Rune begins to develop a secret friendship with the elusive Thorn, who dresses in clothing straight out of the 19th century, she realizes that in his presence she feels cured. Thorn may be falling for Rune, but the phantom haunting RoseBlood wants her for a very specific and dangerous purpose. As their love continues to grow, Thorn is faced with an impossible choice: lead Rune to her destruction, or save her and face the wrath of the phantom, the only father he’s ever known.
When I Found You
Catherine Ryan Hyde - 2009
To his shock, the child—wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat—is still alive. To his wife’s shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy…but the child’s grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she’ll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him. Fifteen years later, the widowered Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. Named Nat, the teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for Nat, and the two engage in a battle of wills that pans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him—not even when Nat suffers a trauma that changes both of their lives forever.From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes When I Found You, an exquisite, emotional tale of the unexpected bonds that nothing in life can break.
Dodge & Twist: A Sequel To Oliver Twist
Tony Lee - 2011
When a meeting with the now grown-up Artful Dodger leads Oliver into a scheme to regain his money, he begins to wonder just how accidental the meeting was, as friends and foes from his past begin to mount up in a plan to steal the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond from the 1851 Great Exhibition.As the heist progresses, Oliver is pulled back into a world he hoped to escape from a decade earlier, a world of deception and betrayal, where every ally is a potential enemy and where his so called 'friend' Dodger is speaking to the ghost of the long dead Fagin - and planning his revenge on Oliver.Oliver finds himself in a maze of lies and half truths while escaping the police, the East End underworld and Dodger's own violent plans - visiting his once home town and workhouse, Fagin's Saffron Hill den, Sowerberry's Undertakers, the British Museum and Newgate Prison in the process, as he faces his own demons, including the now destitute Mister Bumble, his one time bully Noah Claypole, and his guilt over the death of Nancy, a decade earlier...In a situation that can only end with a noose around his neck, Oliver must find a way out of this nightmare - or forever stay a pawn in a game far bigger than that of the people around him, a game he must win at all costs...DODGE & TWIST is a rollercoaster ride through Victorian London, involving characters from OLIVER TWIST in a brand new, thrilling adventure.TONY LEE is an award winning writer of audio dramas and comics, the ongoing writer of IDW's DOCTOR WHO series for both Tenth and Eleventh Doctors and the writer of OUTLAW: THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD and EXCALIBUR: THE LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR, both American Library Association 'Books for Teens' finalists. His graphic novel adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES topped the New York Times Bestselling Graphic Novel list in 2010."Tony Lee is one of the best story-tellers working in comics today" - Michael Moorcock"Tony Lee is a supremely talented writer" - MTV Network"One of the fastest rising stars among the new generation of British comic writers" - Comics International
Dothead: Poems
Amit Majmudar - 2016
Within the first pages, Amit Majmudar asserts the claims of both the self and the other: the title poem shows us the place of an Indian American teenager in the bland surround of a mostly white peer group, partaking of imagery from the poet’s Hindu tradition; the very next poem is a fanciful autobiography, relying for its imagery on the religious tradition of Islam. From poems about the treatment at the airport of people who look like Majmudar (“my dark unshaven brothers / whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends”) to a long, freewheeling abecedarian poem about Adam and Eve and the discovery of oral sex, Dothead is a profoundly satisfying cultural critique and a thrilling experiment in language. United across a wide range of tones and forms, the poems inhabit and explode multiple perspectives, finding beauty in every one.
The Marshall's Second Chance
Aurora Hanson - 2018
They swore to be best friends forever, but could that love be rekindled and save them both after life had treated them both so badly? Mariner Jones was the new Marshall sent to clean up the town and Jenny Carson had thrown herself into building the ranch for her son after a blow that sent her into a dark place. Friendship kept them on a quest to find the truth, put them all in danger, made them fight for what was right. But could that friendship be love that had never really gone away?
"The Marshall's Second Chance" is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
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The Passing Storm
Christine Nolfi - 2021
With her father, Connor, she tends to their Ohio farm, a forty-acre spread that itself has enjoyed better days. As memories sweep through her, some too precious to bear, Rae gives shelter from a brutal winter to a teenager named Quinn Galecki.Quinn has been thrown out by his parents, a couple too troubled to help steer the misunderstood boy through his own losses. Now Quinn has found a temporary home with the Langdons—and an unexpected kinship, because Rae, Quinn, and Connor share a past and understand one another’s pain. But its depths—and all its revelations and secrets—have yet to come to light. To finally move forward, Rae must confront them and also fight for Quinn, whose parents have other plans in mind for their son.With forgiveness, love, and the spring thaw, there might be hope for a new season—a second chance Rae believed in her heart was gone forever.
The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie - 1988
Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations. --back cover
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Therese Anne Fowler - 2013
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.
Up the Down Staircase
Bel Kaufman - 1964
It has been translated into sixteen languages, made into a prize-winning motion picture, and staged as a play at high schools all over the United States; its very title has become part of the American idiom.Never before has a novel so compellingly laid bare the inner workings of a metropolitan high school. Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents--anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.
The Winters
Lisa Gabriele - 2018
But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell. She soon realizes there is no clear place for her in this twisted little family: Max and Dani circle each other like cats, a dynamic that both repels and fascinates her, and he harbors political ambitions with which he will allow no woman—alive or dead—to interfere.As the soon-to-be second Mrs. Winter grows more in love with Max, and more afraid of Dani, she is drawn deeper into the family’s dark secrets—the kind of secrets that could kill her, too. The Winters is a riveting story about what happens when a family’s ghosts resurface and threaten to upend everything.