18 books like My Dark Vanessa
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon…
Shares: Teacher-student relationship, Teacher-student relationships
The Centaur
In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life. Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and his own relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur is one of John Updike's…
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Olivia
“Considered one of the most subtle and beautifully written lesbian novels of the century, this 1949 classic returns to print in a Cleis Press edition. Dorothy Strachey’s classic Olivia captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie,…
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Anne of Avonlea
The second story in the ever-popular Anne of Green Gables series.Now Anne is half past sixteen and she's ready to begin a new life teaching in her old school. She's as feisty as ever and is fiercely determined to inspire young hearts with her own ambitions. But some of her pupils are as boisterous and high-spirited as Anne, and so life in her Avonlea classroom becomes a lesson in discovery and…
Shares: Teachers, Teenage Girls
She Said
The instant New York Times bestseller."An instant classic of investigative journalism...‘All the President’s Men’ for the Me Too era." — Carlos Lozada, The Washington PostFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and abuse for the New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the thrilling untold story of their investigation and its…
Shares: Sex crimes, Women
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark’s timeless classic about a controversial teacher who deeply marks the lives of a select group of students in the years leading up to World War II
"Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite…
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The Water Cure
"An extraordinary otherworldly debut... [Mackintosh] is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world: everything is luminous, precise, slow to the point of dread." --The Guardian The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men King has tenderly staked out a territory for…
Shares: Psychological, Women
The Tender Years
Virginia is a young girl becoming slowly but surly a very beautiful young women. But during her tender years she is involved in conflicts between friends, right and wrong, and wondering what to do during circumstances. When her friend, Jenny Wood, is always coming up with plans and harmless gags, to trick people, Virginia must make a decision about what to do. Virginia's efforts to convert Jenny…
Shares: Teenagers, Teenage Girls
Amy and Isabelle
With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical…
Shares: Teacher-student relationships, Teenage Girls
Where the heart is
Talk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change. But Novalee is about to discover hidden treasures in this small Southwest town--a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people willing to help a homeless,…
Shares: Teenagers, Teenage Girls
Bloodsucking Fiends
At last, a love story you can really sink your teeth into! With a psychedelic inventiveness that invites comparison with Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, Christopher Moore, the author of Coyote Blue, spins a hip tale of vampires on the loose and in love in San Francisco.
When Jody wakes up in an alley, under a dupster, with a badly burned arm and a pain in her neck, she knows it isn't going to be…
Shares: Teenagers, Women
Middlesex
A unique coming of age story. While the main character in this novel is dealing with gender identity issues the main focus of this brilliantly written story is the confusion we all face as we grow into the person we were meant to be. The reader finds himself identifying with the main character's experiences. This is a brilliantly written story. The prose is honest in a way that few authors dare…
Shares: Teenagers, Teenage Girls
The Girls
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who…
Shares: Literary, Teenage Girls
REST OF HER LIFE, THE
This incredibly nuanced, beautifully written novel treats moral dilemma with the riveting, character-driven plot of a Jane Hamilton or a Jodi Picoult. This novel looks at one incident and how it changes everything for Leigh, the mother of a pretty, popular high school senior, and their entire family. It’s a novel about mothers, daughters, sisters, and female friends, and the ripple effect that an…
Shares: Teenagers, Teenage Girls
Coming of age in Samoa
The classic anthropological study describes what it was like in the 1920s for girls growing up in the culture of the Samoan Islands, offering provocative insights into such topics as childhood, gender roles, and culture.
Shares: Teenagers, Women
The last song
1 bestselling author Nicholas Sparks's new novel is at once a compelling family drama and a heartrending tale of young love.Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her…
Shares: Teenagers, Teenage Girls
Academy street
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess…
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Such a Fun Age
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing…
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