18 books like A Bird in the House
Oh, the Places You'll Go!
In this joyous ode to life, Dr. Seuss addresses graduates of all ages, from nursery school to medical school, and gives them the get-up-and-go to move mountains with the unrivaled exuberance and charm that have made Dr. Seuss's books favorites for years.
Shares: Community pick
A strange manuscript found in a copper cylinder
Four men aboard a boat find the titular strange manuscript in a cylindar floating in the sea. It turns out to be the story of Adam More, a sailor stranded in a savage hidden country in Antarctica. In this "nation" are everything from cannibals to kings and the bizarre citizens love death and poverty as other nations love life and prosperity. Can Adam escape...?
Shares: Canadian literature, Canadian fiction
The cure for death by lightning
Gail Anderson-Dargatz's story takes place against the backdrop of daily life on a farm in remote Turtle Valley, British Columbia, during World War II Beth Weeks is fifteen years old and lives with her family. Strange things are happening: a classmate of Beth's is mauled to death; children go missing on a nearby reservation; and Beth herself is being hunted by an unseen predator.
The valley is…
Shares: Canadian literature, Canadian fiction
La route d'Altamont
First published in French in 1966, The Road Past Altamont pierces to the heart of a child's world, creating a delicate, yet substantial network of impressions, emotions, and relationships. In her writing, Gabrielle Roy allowed "nothing extraneous or false to stand," according to the translator, Joyce Marshall. The literary style of Roy, whose fiction reflects her childhood on the Canadian…
Shares: Canadian literature, Short Stories
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
"The depression of the 1930s led people to desperate measures to survive. The Marathon Dance Craze, which flourished at that time, seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money--dancing the hours away for cash. But, the underside of that Craze was filled with a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms. [author's] classic American story captures that dark side in this powerful…
Shares: Depressions, Social life and customs
The Stone Diaries
This is the poignant story of Daisy Goodwill, twentieth-century pilgrim, from her calamitous birth in Canada to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Struggling to find her place in the world, she listens and observes, becoming a witness to her own life and death in this rich tale that reflects and illuminates our own unsettled era.
~from the back cover
Shares: Canadian fiction, Canada, Women
The Love of a Good Woman
In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes - the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart.
Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met - the summer, as it turns…
Shares: Canada, Women, Social life and customs, Short Stories
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Alice Munro has long been heralded for her penetrating, lyrical prose, and in "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" -- the basis for Sarah Polley's film Away From Her -- her prodigious talents are once again on display. As she follows Grant, a retired professor whose wife Fiona begins gradually to lose her memory and drift away from him, we slowly see how a lifetime of intimate details can create a…
Shares: Canada, Women, Social life and customs, Short Stories
The Moccasin Maker
Reflects the plight of Indian women caught between the forces of cultural continuity and the pressures of assimilation in Canada.
Shares: Canada, Social life and customs, Short Stories
The Measure of a Heart (Women of the West #6)
Anna Trent felt fortunate to finish the eighth grade with first-class honors. Already past her sixteenth birthday, most of the girls her age had been forced long ago to drop out to help at home. She loved school loved to learn, loved the excitement of new discoveries, loved the quickening of her pulse as she shared some great adventure in the pages of a book. And now that is over.
The oldest…
Shares: Canada, Women
The Pool in the Desert
A collection of stories by Sara Jeannette Duncan. In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian India.
Shares: Canada, Women, Social life and customs
Une page d'amour
Je me decide a joindre a ce volume l'arbre genealogique des Rougon-Macquart. Deux raisons me determinent. La premiere est que beaucoup de personnes m'ont demande cet arbre. Il doit, en effet, aider les lecteurs a se retrouver, parmi les membres assez nombreux de la famille dont je me suis fait l'historien. La seconde raison est plus compliquee. Je regrette de n'avoir pas publie l'arbre dans le…
Shares: Women, Social life and customs
Lady Oracle
A bored wife takes off on a journey of excitement and discovery.
Shares: Canadian fiction, Social life and customs
Van Bibber and Others
In "Van Bibber and Others," Richard Harding Davis crafts a collection of short stories that encapsulate the spirited social dynamics of the turn of the 20th century. With his characteristic wit and keen observational prowess, Davis explores themes of class distinction, romance, and the complexities of human interaction within the vibrant backdrop of New York City. His prose is characterized by a…
Shares: Social life and customs, Short Stories
Let The Circle be Unbroken
Let the Circle Be Unbroken is a story of a small Mississippi town in the 1930s, and the troubles that plague its black community. Picking up where its precursor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, leaves off, Mildred Taylor recounts the trials of this small community through the characters of the Logan family. More specifically, it focuses on the children of the family; Stacey, Cassie, Little Man and…
Shares: Depressions, Social life and customs
A Twist in the Tale
Jeffrey Archer's collection of twelve spellbinding stories, A Twist in the Tale, will sweep you on a journey of thwarted ambition, undying passion, and unswerving honor that you'll never forget. No one can weave a web of suspense, deliver a jolt of surprise, or teach a lesson in living like bestselling author Jeffrey Archer. From Africa to the Middle East, and from London to Beijing, Archer…
Shares: Short Stories
Roses for Mama
She's cared for her siblings as best she could . . . but is it enough? Instead of the new life she and her family expected to forge out west, seventeen-year-old Angela is thrust into the role of caring for her three younger siblings after the death of their parents. With the help of her older brother, and trust in God, Angela is determined to raise the children as her mother would have wanted.As…
Shares: Canada, Women
The Testaments
15 years after the sons of Jacob seized power in the USA and became Gilead. The story is told from three female viewpoints; Daisy, Agnes and Lydia. Daisy struggles with coming to the realization of her past and who she really is, Agnes tells her story and life in Gilead, and Lydia contemplates her life and decisions made.
When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The…
Shares: Canadian fiction, Women