18 books like Unless
Annie John
Since her first, prize-winning collection of stories, At the Bottom of the River, Jamaica Kincaid's work has been met with nothing short of amazement. The New York Times hailed her "prophetic power" and the Los Angeles Times Book Review said: "No one else seems to be writing quite this way right now." With Annie John, the story of a young girl coming of age in Antigua, Kincaid tore open the theme…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Teenage Girls, Domestic fiction
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
This is a story of different loves; and of how a man may need two women in such a way that he can be happy with neither. Sacred and profane love are related opposites; the one enjoyed renders the other necessary, so that the ever unsatisfied heart swings constantly to and fro.
Shares: Women authors, Domestic fiction
The Help
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared…
Shares: Friends, Literary Fiction, Domestic fiction
White horses
When Teresa was a little girl, she dreamed of dark-eyed, fearless heroes on white horses who would sweep her away. But now, as the adult Teresa negotiates life and love, she begins to understand that fairy tales don't always come true...
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
Act of will
Audra is an impoverished children's nanny from Leeds who sacrificed everything for her only daughter. Christina is a talented art student who won world renown as a fashion designer – yet who has known pain and heartache. Kyle is a rebellious young woman who chafes against her mother's success – and in whom her grandmother's spirit of duty and sacrifice is reborn. Moving from the bleak Yorkshire…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction, Women
Perfect Nightmare
If you open your house to strangers, who knows who might come in. And what they might be after. Or whom. Now, ponder the unthinkable and surrender to your darkest dread, as sinister storyteller extraordinaire John Saul weaves a heart-stopping tale of lurking terror and twisted intent.Every parent's nightmare becomes reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
Winter Garden
Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother?
From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things is the debut novel of Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much." The book explores how the small things affect people's behavior and their lives. The book also reflects its irony against casteism, which is a major…
Shares: Literary Fiction, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
Autobiography and Questions of Gender
Originally published in 1991. Addressing the ways in which the ideology of gender and its social construction determine autobiographical self-representations, the essays here consider several women’s works in the light of the social and historical conditions which enabled their production. Some examine diaries as a feminine form and ask about the ways in which thematic content such as childbirth…
Shares: Women authors, American literature
The Good Rat LP
"I didn't tell anyone that I was going to Santa Fe to kill myself."On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless facade lay a dangerous secret—for the better part of her life Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods…
Shares: Mentally ill, Women
The Shipping News
At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives,…
Shares: Women authors, Domestic fiction, American literature
Ladder of Years
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKBALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION, declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead is last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, who…
Shares: Women authors, Psychological fiction, Women
Invisible Man
Invisible Man is the story of a young black man from the South who does not fully understand racism in the world. Filled with hope about his future, he goes to college, but gets expelled for showing one of the white benefactors the real and seamy side of black existence. He moves to Harlem and becomes an orator for the Communist party, known as the Brotherhood. In his position, he is both…
Shares: Mentally ill, Psychological fiction
The Stone Diaries
This is the poignant story of Daisy Goodwill, twentieth-century pilgrim, from her calamitous birth in Canada to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Struggling to find her place in the world, she listens and observes, becoming a witness to her own life and death in this rich tale that reflects and illuminates our own unsettled era.
~from the back cover
Shares: Women authors, Domestic fiction, Women
In her own words
In Her Own Words: A Primary Source Book of Autobiographical Texts by Women Artists in the 19th and 20th Centuries gives voice to sixteen influential women artists, providing students with a highly personal lens through which they can analyze and interpret each artist's visual works. The material progresses chronologically to better situate the artistic and literary works of the featured women…
Shares: Women authors, Women
The Accidental
The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound effect on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family…
Shares: Literary Fiction, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
False memory
"Martie Rhodes helps her friend Susan Jagger, who suffers from agoraphobia, attend visits to psychologist Dr. Ahriman. Martie's husband, Dusty Rhodes, tries to help his brother Skeet, by providing employment in his painting business. Skeet was in rehab for drug use, and when he first appears in the story, he is high and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. Dusty decides to take him back…
Shares: Psychological fiction, Women
Women's Life Writing And Imagined Communities
Engaging Donna Haraway: Lives in the Natureculture Web explores the impact of major theorist, Donna Haraway, in such diverse areas as feminisms, Marxism, new materialism, science studies, posthumanism, animal studies, ecocriticism, digital media, and life narrative. The book shows how Haraway’s decades-long career as a major theoretical voice and provocateur of thinking about new and complex…
Shares: Women authors, Women