18 books like The Song of the Lark
Boys in the Trees
Carly Simon is a household name. She was the staple of the '70s and '80s Billboard charts and was famously married to James Taylor with whom she has two children. She has had a career that has spanned four decades, resulting in thirteen top 40 hits, including the Number 1 song 'You're So Vain', numerous Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was the first artist in history to win…
Shares: Women singers, Singers
Escape
In this companion to #1 New York Times bestseller The Black Book, Detective Billy Harney chases down a prison escape artist and billionaire crime boss—while a young girl’s life hangs in the balance. As Chicago PD’s special-ops leader, Detective Billy Harney knows well that money is not the only valuable currency. The filthy rich man he’s investigating is down to his last twenty…
Shares: Chicago, American literature
We Followed Our Stars
Ida Cook was born at 37 Croft Avenue, Sunderland. Together with her sister (Mary) Louise Cook (1901-1991), she rescued Jews from the Nazis during the 1930s. In 1965 the sisters were honoured for their rescue work and named among the 'Righteous Gentiles' in Jerusalem, thus joining Oskar Schindler among others. Ida Cook wrote over a hundred romance novels, many of which were translated. She helped…
Shares: Opera, Singers
John Barleycorn
It all came to me one election day. It was on a warm California afternoon, and I had ridden down into the Valley of the Moon from the ranch to the little village to vote Yes and No to a host of proposed amendments to the Constitution of the State of California. Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it. Then I had ridden…
Shares: Opera, Singers, American literature, Classic Literature
Bel Canto
PerfectBound e-book exclusive: "Friendship and Love," an interview with Ann Patchett.A prolonged hostage crisis in the lavish home of a South American politician turns into something quite different as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and passionate, ill-fated love blooms. Winner of the 2002 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction.Somewhere in South…
Shares: Women singers, Opera
20 Years at Hull House
Jane Addams's narrative of life in an immigrant urban neighborhood provides students with an introduction to the issues of the Progressive era and the tenets of social activism. This new teaching edition reduces Addams's original text by about 35 percent, trimming illustrative detail to focus on the ideological underpinnings of the original work. The author sketches a brief biographical portrait…
Shares: Chicago, Classic Literature, History
And a Voice to Sing With
A disarmingly frank, moving, and sometimes very funny memoir of Joan Baez's life, loves, beliefs, and music.
Shares: Women singers, Singers
County
"The amazing tale of "County" is the story of one of America's oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From it's inception as a "Poor House" dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago's Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the healthcare provider of last resort for the city's uninsured. COUNTY covers more than thirty years of its history, beginning in the…
Shares: Chicago, History
Marshall Field's
155 p. : 23 cm
Shares: Chicago, History
O Pioneers!
"Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits the family farm and finds love with an old friend." "The heroic battle for survival of simple pioneer folk in the Nebraska country of the 1880s. John Bergson, a Swedish farmer, struggles desperately with the soil but dies unsatisfied. His daughter Alexandra resolves to vindicate his faith, and her strong character carries…
Shares: Swedish Americans, Classic Literature, History
So Big
So Big - winner of the Pulitzer Prize - the unforgettable story of Selina Peake Dejong, her marriage, widowhood, eventual success as a truck farmer, and of her son, Dirk. In So Big, Ferber simultaneously created a vivid picture of turn-of-the-century Chicago and dealt with the contemporary issues of poverty, Americanization, family tensions, sexism, and success.
Shares: Chicago, Coming-of-age, American literature
Women musicians in Victorian fiction, 1860-1900
This title was first publushed in 2000. Phyllis Weliver investigates representations of female musicians in British novels from 1860 to 1900 with regard to changing gender roles, musical practices and scientific discourses. During this time women were portrayed in complex and nuanced ways as they played and sang in family drawing rooms. Women in the 19th century were judged on their manners,…
Shares: Musical fiction, History
Candy
Banned upon its initial publication, the now-classic Candy is a romp of a story about the impossibly sweet Candy Christian, a wide-eyed, luscious, all-American girl. Candy -- a satire of Voltaire's Candide -- chronicles her adventures with mystics, sexual analysts, and everyone she meets when she sets out to experience the world.
Shares: Young women, Coming-of-age
Studs Lonigan
[William V. Lipton][1] from Ann Arbor, MI says:
"This is both a coming-of-age novel and a social history. Set during the 1920s and 1930s, it follows Studs as he grows through his teen years in Chicago. It shows the influences on urban children, the stresses on families and the American society during that time. The characters and dialogue are captivating." ([on Flashlight Worthy][2])
[1]:…
Shares: Chicago, Coming-of-age, History
Music in African American Fiction
Originally published in 1995, The Music of African American Fiction is a historical analysis of the tradition of representing music in African American fiction. The book examines the impact of evolving musical styles and innovative musicians on black culture as is manifested in the literature. The analysis begins with the slave narratives and the emergence of the first black fiction of the…
Shares: Musical fiction, History
Doctor Thorne
The Chronicles of Barsetshire, Book 3: Dr. Thorne
Mary Thorne, orphaned (and illegitimate) niece of Dr. Thorne, has long been a favorite at Greshamsbury House--until Lady Arabella Gresham learns that her only son Frank is in love with Mary. The unhappy Mary is banished forthwith, because the Gresham family fortunes are so depleted that Frank must marry money.
Frank, however, is one of the few…
Shares: Children of clergy, Classic Literature, History
Belinda
Maria Edgeworth won the admiration of her contemporaries Jane Austen and Walter Scott as well as later writers such as Thackeray and Turgenev. In Belinda (1801) she tackles issues of gender and race in a manner at once comic and thought-provoking. Braving the perils of the marriage market, Belinda learns to think for herself as the examples of her friends prove singularly unreliable.
Edgeworth's…
Shares: Young women, Coming-of-age
The way of all flesh
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.' With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, the novel is a thinly…
Shares: Children of clergy, Classic Literature