18 books like Flirting with Pete
Vermilion
From the jacket
From the very beginning, for Lindsay Phillips, there was the memory of that terrible cane with the dragon's head-threatening horror, torment, death. And always there was Vermilion whispering in Lindsay's ear: "Go! You must go to Arizona. Everything you want is waiting for you there."
Lindsay hadn't listened to Vermilion for years, but now she couldn't shut out her…
Shares: Fathers, Fathers and daughters, Death
Miss Marjoribanks
When Dr. Marjoribanks’s wife dies, his teenage daughter makes it her purpose in life “to be a comfort to dear papa.” At least, Lucilla thinks, ten years of such devotion might suffice, by which time she might have begun to “go off.” But beneath this grand intention lies a yet more ambitious plan: to revolutionize the moribund and constricted social life of Carlingford. She is remarkably…
Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans, Romance
The Magnificent Ambersons
Major Amberson had "made a fortune" in 1878, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then. Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years…
Shares: Inheritance and succession in fiction, Inheritance and succession
The Book of Form and Emptiness
The Book of Form and Emptiness is a novel by American author Ruth Ozeki, published in 2021 by Viking. Ozekis fourth novel, the book won the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction. The story follows a boy who hears voices from inanimate objects while the narrative explores themes of mental illness and bereavement.
Shares: Fathers, Death, Bildungsromans
Howards End
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece
Shares: Home ownership, Inheritance and succession, Romance
The Bean Trees Anniversary Edition
Taylor, a poor Kentuckian making her way west with an abandoned baby girl, stops in Tucson where she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.
Shares: Young women in fiction, Young women, Bildungsromans
Daisy Miller
A beautiful American girl, Daisy Miller, is pursued by the sophisticated Winterbourne, who moves in fairly conservative circles. Their courtship is frowned upon by the other Americans they meet in Switzerland and Italy because Daisy is too vivacious and flirtatious and neither belongs to, nor follows the rules of, their society. The novella is a comment on American and European attitudes towards…
Shares: Young women in fiction, Young women, Romance
La père Goriot
SCOTT (copy 1): The Hédi Bouraoui Collection in Maghrebian and Franco-Ontario Literatures is the gift of University Professor Emeritus Hédi Bouraoui.
Shares: Fathers and daughters in fiction, Fathers and daughters
The emperor of Ocean Park
n his triumphant fictional debut, Stephen Carter combines a large-scale, riveting novel of suspense with the saga of a unique family. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper crust African American society of the Eastern seabord--families who summer at Martha's Vineyard--and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school.
Talcott Garland is a successful law professor,…
Shares: Fathers, Death
The Barrowfields
"Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father -- outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow -- reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writing desk of this fiercely brilliant man. But when tragedy tips his father…
Shares: Fathers, Death, Bildungsromans
The alchemist's daughter
There are long-held secrets at the manor house in Buckinghamshire, England, where Emilie Selden has been raised in near isolation by her father. A student of Isaac Newton, John Selden believes he can turn his daughter into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. Secluded in their ancient house, with only two servants for company, he fills Emilie with knowledge and records her progress…
Shares: Fathers, Fathers and daughters, Death, Young women
Loitering with Intent
From Publisher's Weekly: "Art, reality and the strange ways the two imitate one another are at the core of Muriel Spark's delightful Loitering with Intent, first published in 1981. Would-be novelist Fleur Talbot works for the snooty, irascible Sir Quentin Oliver at the Autobiographical Association, whose members are all at work on their memoirs. When her employer gets his hands on Fleur's…
Shares: Young women in fiction, Young women, Bildungsromans
Washington Square
With a new afterword by Michael CunninghamWhat Catherine Sloper lacks in brains and beauty, she makes up for by being "very good." The handsome Morris Townsend would do anything to win her hand-even if it means pretending that he loves the homely ingenue, and cares nothing for her opulent wealth.
Throughout time, the women of the world always had limited rights when it came to anything. You…
Shares: Inheritance and succession, Fathers and daughters, Young women, Romance
The dead secret
The Dead Secret is a novel published by Wilkie Collins, first in 1857 as a series in Charles Dickens Household Words weekly magazine and later the same year as a book. Much like his later novel The Woman in White (1860), it can be considered one of the earliest example of a sensation novel, as it contains themes of illegitimacy, blackmail, and false identity.
Shares: Inheritance and succession in fiction, Inheritance and succession
The legacy of Cain
At the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not disown, I consent to look back through a long interval of years and to describe events which took place within the walls of an English prison during the earlier period of my appointment as Governor.
Shares: Fathers and daughters in fiction, Fathers and daughters
High Lonesome
Many a hardcase had died trying to tale the bank and settle an old score at the same time. But he never counted on meeting a beautiful woman and her trail-savvy but reckless father, headed a straight for Apache country. Now Considine and his gang can either ride like hell for the border just ahead of an angry posse, or join the old man and his daughter in a desperate last stand against…
Shares: Fathers and daughters in fiction, Fathers and daughters
Upstate
Harlem, 1985. Antonio has been seeing Natasha for a while now. Their relationship is full of the drama, the passion and the intensity of every first love affair. But their story is different. For Antonio is on trial for the murder of his father. This is Natasha and Antonio's story, one struggling to cope with life in jail, the other with life outside. Extraordinarily vivid and honest, their…
Shares: Fathers, Death, Bildungsromans
Twilight at Mac's Place
The son of a dead CIA agent is offered $100,000 for the rights to his father's memoirs sight unseen.
Shares: Fathers, Death