18 books like Howards End

What to read after Howards End — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh · 1945 · ★ 4.0 · 327p · ≈ 10h · Challenging The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles… Shares: Romance & Relationships

Imperialism [and] Social classes; two essays Joseph Alois Schumpeter · 1951 · 291p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Joseph Schumpeter was not a member of the Austrian School, but he was an enormously creative classical liberal, and this 1919 book shows him at his best. He presents a theory of how states become empires and applies his insight to explaining many historical episodes. His account of the foreign policy of Imperial Rome reads like a critique of the US today. The second essay examines class mobility… Shares: Social conflict, Social classes

Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy · 1895 · ★ 3.8 · 488p · ≈ 16h · Challenging Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a… Shares: Illegitimate children, Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs, Romance

Flirting with Pete Barbara Delinsky · 2003 · ★ 3.9 · 355p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Psychologist Casey Ellis never met her father -- but that didn't stop her from following in his professional footsteps. Now he has died, and Casey is shocked to have inherited his elegant Boston town house, complete with a maid and a handsome, enigmatic gardener. When she finds a manuscript that could be a novel, a journal, or a case study of one of her father's patients in her new home, she… Shares: Home ownership, Inheritance and succession, Romance

The Woman in White Wilkie Collins · 1859 · ★ 4.0 · 748p · ≈ 24h · Demanding The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors… Shares: Country homes, Inheritance and succession, Social life and customs

The Go-Between L. P. Hartley · 1953 · ★ 4.0 · 296p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Narrated as a memoir, this excellent novel tells the story of one summer at the turn of the century when the narrator was a young boy. The boy spends the summer in question as a guest at a country estate where he befriends a local farmer. He soon finds himself acting as an unwitting messenger, carrying letters back and forth between the farmer and the daughter of his host on whom he has a crush. Shares: Country homes, Social classes, Romance & Relationships, Romance

Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen · 1811 · ★ 4.1 · 331p · ≈ 11h · Challenging When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne. When Elinor forms an attachment for the wealthy… Shares: Inheritance and succession, Social classes, Sisters, Romance

Reason and Romance Debra White Smith · 2004 · 326p · ≈ 10h · Moderate "Smith shows her expertise with Jane Austen's work. . . . A fun and well-crafted romance through and through."--RT Book Reviews on Reason and Romance Reason and Romance: A Contemporary Retelling of Sense and Sensibility Sisters Elaina and Anna Woods find themselves caught up in whirlwind romances. But when both are confronted with heartbreaking revelations, can their bond withstand the strain… Shares: Inheritance and succession, Sisters, Romance

Bleak House Charles Dickens · 1850 · ★ 4.0 · 588p · ≈ 19h · Challenging As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo,… Shares: Illegitimate children, Inheritance and succession, Social life and customs

Crazy Rich Asians Kevin Kwan · 2013 · ★ 3.9 · 545p · ≈ 18h · Moderate (Description comes from the 2013 Anchor Books edition) When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees on a summer in Singapore to visit her boyfriend's "traditional" Chinese family, she expects the visit to be relaxing, if a little dull. She has no idea.... Nick's childhood home is a palace. He grew up riding in more private planes than cars. He and Rachel will be attending the wedding of the year. Oh, and… Shares: Social conflict, Romance

Autumn Lover Elizabeth Lowell · 1996 · ★ 3.8 · 504p · ≈ 16h · Moderate Returning to her Wyoming ranch at the Civil War's end, Elyssa Sutton finds it picked bare by scavengers and coveted by determined men. Yet the proud young woman vows never again to abandon her Ruby Mountain home-though it means enlisting the aid of a dark and dangerous stranger who lives for revenge alone. Hunter Maxwell has suffered from the savagery of outlaws and the faithlessness of a woman.… Shares: Romance & Relationships, Historical Fiction, Romance

The Custom of the Country Edith Wharton · 1900 · ★ 4.1 · 614p · ≈ 20h · Challenging Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century appeared in 1913; it both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers, and established her as a major novelist. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the Midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary, and manipulative, her principal… Shares: Remarried people, Social life and customs, Romance

Tomorrow about this time Grace Livingston Hill · 1923 · ★ 4.1 · 291p · ≈ 9h · Challenging Half-sisters Silver and Athalie Greeves have grown up worlds apart. Silver is a humble, faith-filled young lady; Athalie is a flapper who takes after her socialite mother. When a chance visit suddenly reunites Silver and Athalie with each other and a father they’ve never known, will a true family emerge where only a family by name existed before? Terrance Bannard, the local minister, is soon… Shares: Sisters, Romance

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Seth Grahame-Smith · 2009 · ★ 3.1 · 319p · ≈ 10h · Moderate “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life!… Shares: Social classes, Sisters, Social life and customs

Mansfield Park Jane Austen · 1814 · ★ 3.9 · 296p · ≈ 9h · Challenging Fanny Price is born to a poor family, but is sent to her mother's rich relations to be brought up with her cousins. There she is treated as an inferior by all except her cousin Edmund, whose kindness towards her earns him her steadfast love. Fanny is quiet and obedient and does not come into her own until her elder cousins leave the estate following a scandalous play put on in their father's… Shares: Country homes, Social classes, Social life and customs, Romance

Rebecca Daphne du Maurier · 1938 · ★ 4.2 · 366p · ≈ 12h · Challenging With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper,… Shares: Remarried people, Romance

The Portrait of a Lady Henry James · 1881 · ★ 3.8 · 634p · ≈ 21h · Demanding Young American Isabel Archer charms European society, but falls prey to the machinations of a calculating older woman. Shares: Inheritance and succession, Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction

The dead secret Wilkie Collins · 1857 · ★ 3.7 · 265p · ≈ 8h · Challenging 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: Illegitimate children, Inheritance and succession, Social life and customs

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