Book picks similar to
Claudia by Rose Franken


fiction
romance
american
classics

Little Women


Louisa May Alcott - 1869
    Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

Sweep: Volume 1


Cate Tiernan - 2001
    But when she meets Cal, a captivatingly handsome coven leader, she makes a discover that turns her whole world upside down: she is a witch, descended from an ancient and powerful line. And so is Cal. Their connection is immediate and unbreakable; Cal teases out Morgan's power, her love, her magick. But Morgan discovers too soon that her powers are strong-- almost too powerful to control. And she begins to suspect that Cal may be keeping secrets from her . . . secrets that could destroy them both.

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume II


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1986
    Watson has faithfully recorded Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the thrilling The Adventure of the Red Circle and the twelve baffling adventures from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.Conan Doyle’s incomparable tales bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where for more than forty years Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time.

Not That Sort of Girl


Mary Wesley - 1987
    So Rose gave Ned her promise never to leave him, and she never didNearly fifty years later, the newly widowed Rose, thought by all to be "not the sort of girl" to stray from her "perfect" marriage, looks back on a life during which she kept faith with Ned - and with her lover, Mylo. This is her story of constancy, passion, humor, and delight - all the verities and ambiguities of love.

Wasted Beauty


Eric Bogosian - 2005
     Reba runs away from her shabby and desolate rural community for the lure of New York City. Her tall and awkward frame lands her work modeling, but she is not prepared for the glamorous, drug-fueled life of a celebrated mannequin. After a series of painful relationships, she sees hope and an exit toward stability and sanity in the man who saves her brother's life. This man is Rick, a successful SoHo general practitioner with a warm family and an idyllic life that has left him restless and hollow. He doesn't take Reba seriously until he finds himself so enmeshed in her beauty that he risks losing everything--his home, his children and his beloved wife. Now this master monologist and author of the acclaimed Mall returns with a sprawling novel of urban desperation and desire that brings to mind the winding narratives of Tom Wolfe salted with the dark urges of Philip Roth. The New York Times hailed Eric Bogosian's fiction as "caustic, fast-paced....Adapting himself to fiction with...the same garrulous intensity he brings to plays and monologues, Mr. Bogosian sets in motion a suburban nightmare." And Entertainment Weekly has lauded his "merciless satirical vision (that) takes you deep into the dark heart of the American dream." Wasted Beauty is Bogosian's enthralling journey through the high life of drugs and fashion celebrity, middle-class guilt and sexual obsession. Copyright © 2005 by Simon & Schuster

Paper Towns


John Green - 2008
    So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew...

Roadrunner


Trisha R. Thomas - 2002
    He’s married to his college sweetheart, Leah, and they have two children and a dream home in Los Angeles. But an injury has sidelined his hot career, and prescription medication and depression are pulling him into a downward spiral, leaving Leah feeling emotionally distanced and lonely. Their fighting escalates, and one night Dell commits an act of violence that changes the course of their lives forever. But Angel Lopez, the cop who arrests Dell, decides to take the law into his own hands. Determined to teach the famous athlete a lesson, he drives Dell to the worst part of town and tries to kick him out of the car. The men struggle and the car crashes. When Angel comes to, Dell is gone and no one knows if he’s dead or alive.Leah is grateful when a guilt-stricken Angel offers to chase the media away from her home and help out around the house, “just until Dell comes home.” She and her family grow to trust him, and Angel falls in love with the Roadrunner’s lovely, grieving wife. Will Dell find his way home? Will Angel replace him? And what really happened that dark night the Roadrunner disappeared?

Sailor Song


Ken Kesey - 1992
    The town and its denizens —colorful refugees from the Lower Forty-Eight and Descendants of Early Aboriginal People- are seduced and besieged by a Hollywood crew, come to film the classic children's book The Sea Lion. The ensuing turf war escalates into a struggle for the soul of the town as the novel spins and swirls toward a harrowing climax.Kesey has given us a unique and powerful novel about America, and this epic tale of the north is a vibrant moral fable for our time.

Crazy in Love


Luanne Rice - 1988
    She and Nick were meant for each other, everyone said so, and their life on the Connecticut shore, among Georgie’s close-knit family, is picture-perfect. But lately Nick has been consumed with his job on Wall Street, and Georgie finds herself plagued with suspicions too awful to contemplate. To distract herself, she plunges into her work with the Swift Observatory, examining the stories of people whose lives have been changed by unexpected tragedy. But it’s when a handsome stranger arrives on her doorstep that Georgie learns firsthand that when your dreams are in danger of collapsing, it’s time to create new ones.…

The Flight of the Falcon


Daphne du Maurier - 1965
    The woman, he gradually comes to realise, was his family's beloved servant many years ago, in his native town of Ruffano. He returns to his birthplace, and once there, finds it is haunted by the phantom of his brother, Aldo, shot down in flames in '43.Over five hundred years before, the sinister Duke Claudio, known as The Falcon, lived his twisted, brutal life, preying on the people of Ruffano. But now it is the twentieth century, and the town seems to have forgotten its violent history. But have things really changed? The parallels between the past and present become ever more evident.

The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened


Don Robertson - 1977
    But only in one direction—from simple to complicated. When he was nine, Morris Bird III learned the meaning of bravery. Now, at seventeen, he's on the verge of adulthood . . . and he's fallen in love. But it's 1952 and the Korean War hangs over his head like a dangling sword—and his prickly, complicated relationship with his cold and silent father has never been satisfactorily resolved. When Morris's own mortality stares him in the face, he learns what it truly means to become a man. The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened is the final book in Don Robertson's classic trilogy featuring one of the most endearing characters in American literature.

The Feast of All Saints


Anne Rice - 1979
    Still, an aristocracy would emerge in this society: artist, poets, and musicians, plantation owners, scientists and craftsmen whose talents and reputations would extend far beyond the limits of their small world. Mega-selling author Anne Rice's probing, lyrical style sweeps us into their midst as she introduces Marcel, the sensitive, blue-eyed scholar, Marie, his breathtakingly beautiful sister, whose curse is to pass for white; Christophe, novelist and teacher, the idol of all young gens and stunning Anna Bella, whose allure for the well-to-do white man would become legend.Here is a compelling and richly textured tale of a people forever caught in the shadows between black and white.

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart


Joyce Carol Oates - 1990
    At the heart of the story are two people, Iris Courtney, who is white, and handsome Jinx Fairchild, the black basketball player who, in protecting Iris, kills a white man.Iris is the only witness to the crime.The two of them are growing up in the early 1950s in a New York industrial town where racial boundaries keep people apart - or bring them together in explosive scenes of fear or desire. The secret link between Iris and Jinx is not only their attraction to each other, but a murder...and a bond of passion and guilt is formed between them. How this one irrevocable, tragic act shapes their lives and alters their destinies becomes Joyce Carol Oate's finest, emotion-packed novel - a work the critics are calling a masterpiece, the best work of America's best writer of contemporary realism.

The Sun Also Rises


Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway - 1926
    A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Let Love Come Last


Taylor Caldwell - 1949
    . . Even when, brutally overriding her refined sensibility, he imprisoned her in a mansion of overwhelming opulence, an accursed house that brought all who lived there grief. . . Even when, before her eyes, she saw him destroying their children with his misguided indulgence. . . For here was a man more powerful, more truly gigantic than any she had ever known, a man she knew she would love until death. . .