18 books like The quick and the dead
The secret life of bees
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest…
Shares: Maternal deprivation, Teenage Girls
How the Light Gets In
A powerful debut from an Australian novelist that features one of the most likeable but contrary figures you are likely to meet in contemporary fiction. Lou Connor, a gifted, unhappy sixteen-year-old, is desperate to escape her life of poverty in Sydney. When she is offered an exchange student placement at a school in America it seems as if her dreams will be fulfilled. Her host family has a…
Shares: Suburban life, Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans
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: Suburban life, Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans
The carnival at Bray
his promising debut, set in the heyday of grunge, tells the story of Maggie Lynch, a displaced Chicagoan and grunge music fan, living in a quiet town (Bray) on the Irish Sea. Maggie was uprooted from her friends, her music scene, and her beloved Uncle Kevin when her romantically fickle mother married her latest boyfriend, resulting in a move to his hometown. During her time of difficult…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans
The Sopranos
"The choir from Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls is being bused from the Port on Scotland's western coast to the national singing finals in the big, big city. And it's an important day for the Sopranos: Orla, Kylah, (Ra)Chell, Manda, and Fionnula (the Cooler) - pub crawling, shoplifting, and body-piercing being top priorities.
Then it's time to lose that competition - lose, because…
Shares: Female friendship, Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans, Friendship
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: Teenage Girls, Orphans, Friendship
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: Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans, Friendship
Sanctuary
Ajax the Younger violates Cassandras sanctuary at the Palladium: tondo of an Attic cup, ca. 440–430 BCE]]
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship
New-England tale
The Early American Women Writers series offers rare works of fiction by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, each reprinted in its entirety, each with a foreword by General Editor Cathy N. Davidson, who places the novel in a historical and literary perspective.
Written in 1822, A New-England Tale is the first of the many novels, tales, and short magazine pieces Catharine Sedgwick published…
Shares: Orphans, Bildungsromans
Mapp and Lucia (Make Way for Lucia, Part 4)
Meet Mapp and Luciatwo of the most unpleasant, disgraceful women you're ever likely to encounter, in E.F. Benson's carefully observed tale of 1930s village life and social ranking Emmeline Lucas (known as Lucia to her friends) is emerging from mourning following the death of her husband. Pretentious, snobbish, and down-right devious, she feels her hometown of Riseholme offers no challenges and…
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship
The Invisible Circus
In Jennifer Egan’s highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans
Grand avenue
"Looking back, it seemed like paradise; lives filled with the blessings of friendship, marriage, children, and career. For twenty years, four friends, Chris, Barbara, Susan, and Vicki shared everything through good times and bad, and faced the challenges of life and love head-on. Now, one sits alone to ponder the strange twists and turns of fate and circumstance. Now, she must sift through each…
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship
Wonder Woman--Warbringer
She will become one of the world's greatest heroes: Wonder Woman. But first she is Diana, Princess of the Amazons, and longs only to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters.
Shares: Female friendship, Bildungsromans
Ghost Wall
The light blinds you; there’s a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside.
In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age.
For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in…
Shares: Female friendship, Teenage Girls
Nana
Publishers Weekly: Nana, Japan's most popular shojo (girl's) manga, is appearing in English for the first time. Nana Komatsu is a flaky young woman who's just emerged from an emotionally devastating affair with an older, married man. She dreams of a perfect romantic love, like in the movies, but her best friend, Junko, counsels her that it might be time to try being friends with a guy instead of…
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship
Nana
Nana "Hachi" Komatsu hopes that moving to Tokyo will help here make a clean start and leave her capricious love life behind her. Nana Osaki, who arrives in the city at the same time, has plans to score big in the world of rock' n' roll. Although these two young women come from different backgrounds, they quickly gecome best friends in a whirlwind world of sex, music, fashion, gossip and all-night…
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship
Midnight Whispers
HAPPY AND INNOCENT, DAWN'S DAUGHTER CHRISTIE HAS GROWN UP IN THE SAFEST, MOST LOVING OF HOMES...
Yet Christie can't help feeling as if a dark cloud hovers over Cutler's Cove... a cloud whose origins lie in her family's troubled history, and the many questions no one, not even Dawn, will answer. Only one person can always chase away her blues: Gavin, Daddy Jimmy's young and handsome…
Shares: Orphans, Bildungsromans
Vanity Fair
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought,…
Shares: Female friendship, Friendship