Here are 100 books that At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream fans have personally recommended if you like
At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream.
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I have always believed that everyone has a story to tell. I have connected to people throughout my life because I chose to sit, listen, and share stories. I do this in my own neighborhood and on my travels worldwide. I do it with people I don’t have anything in common with and people I think I might not like. Every time, without exception, I learn something. Often, I am inspired. These experiences have tested and grown my compassion, empathy, kindness, and understanding capacity. I suppose this is why I love reading. It’s like meeting strangers and sharing stories.
I loved Jeanette Walls honest and raw telling of her father’s mental illness and her mother’s unorthodox mothering and the impact they both had on her childhood and adulthood. People with mental illness are often portrayed as villains with no redeeming qualities.
Still, Walls finds the bits and pieces of her father that are beautiful, made her childhood sometimes magical, and led to her own successful career and life.
Now a major motion picture starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson.
This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents.
At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane,…
My journey from a teen struggling with self-harm, drug use, and overwhelming emotions to a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification Clinician™ and director of Creative Healing, Teen Support Centers, uniquely positions me to understand the deep emotional challenges teens face. Having navigated my own tumultuous youth and now parenting a "Fire Feeler" teen, I use my personal and professional insights to guide thousands of teens and their parents. I am passionately committed to creating environments where teens are supported while the entire family learns skills to improve and work together.
I love this book for its intricate examination of how past secrets and traumas shape our current selves.
The book's deep dive into the complexities of motherhood and identity against a suburban backdrop made me reflect on my own family dynamics and the silent, unseen forces at play. It’s a heart-wrenching tale of what it means to be a mother in all forms and how our children reflect these struggles back to us.
"Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning
"To say I love this book is an understatement. It's a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears." -Reese Witherspoon
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their…
Funny stuff happens all the time in my wafty, solo-travelling life. Sometimes that funny stuff will only become apparent after the proverbial dust has settled and I’m no longer in imminent danger or at my wit’s end: the hilarity of a situation reveals itself when I’m telling the story. Travelling alone puts you in a vulnerable position of being open to ‘the moment’ far more so than when you are travelling with someone else. I get a sense of place and people and write about what happens true to my voice which is intrinsically connected to my funny bone—an intention to capture culture through accurate observation and tragi-comic humour.
I borrowed Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denimfrom a friend years back, and instantly fell in love with David Sedaris.
I could have picked any book by Mr. Sedaris - they are all brilliant and have been hugely influential in my writing journey—but I vividly remember reading the chapter "Six to Eight Black Men", which beautifully illustrates a Dutch Christmas cultural tradition and shows it up in all its whacky weirdness, solely through storytelling and observation. Alone in my bedroom, I remember having to put the book down because I was howling with laughter.
David Sedaris is the master of pinpointing the ludicrous, seemingly without effort or trying to be funny.
He is one of my heroes. I think I became a bit obsessed.
David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn't it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives -- a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the…
I like to say I had a colorful childhood. With a mentally unstable mother who bred children as a hobby, I was part of a band of siblings that lived life pretty free-range. It made for dark, but arguably, entertaining times. If you came from an abnormally normal childhood and can’t relate, I’m not sure we can be friends. Escaping with a book and glass of wine is balanced living, and I’ve given tips on the best wine selections to go with the following books featuring dysfunctional families. But just between you and me, any wine will do.
Things Unsaid provides the best reason why not everyone who marries should have children. Seriously, if you don’t like children, don’t have children! And yet, we can still be entertained by reading about those mothers who don’t deserve the title. Diana Y. Paul’s novel paints an in-depth character study while also examining the hardship that follows neglected children after they enter adulthood, trying to fit into their new roles as parents and caregivers of aging parents.
Best read with a red Zinfandel (Just to be clear…red, not white).
PAST AWARDS: Bookclub Favorite Winner of New Adult Fiction-Beverly Hills Book Awards Winner of the SILVER Medal for Best Fiction in Drama from Readers' Favorite Finalist USA Best Books Awards in Literary Fiction and in New Fiction
Inspired by a true story about mothers, daughters, and impossible choices-Jules Foster, a child psychologist, upon hearing news of her estranged, narcissistic mother's terminal diagnosis, chooses to care for her mother over her own daughter, only to find out she has been betrayed all along. Things Unsaid asks us to consider what children owe their aging parents and siblings.
I am a lifelong fan of cozy mysteries, starting with Nancy Drew. Although I have written primarily about women of the 19th-century American West, I always longed to write mysteries. The Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries is my fourth series but the first outrageous one. The books combine my love of all things culinary (I’ve even written cookbooks) and my love of Chicago, my hometown. What makes them outrageous? Irene’s diva-like deceptions and Henny’s snarky commentary.
Social media expert Maddy Montgomery, left standing at the altar, is #StartingOver in small-town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby. Her plan to sell the bakery and go back to her sophisticated life is spoiled by a restriction in the will requiring her to spend a year in New Bison. Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs, but the locals are friendly, and Lake Michigan is beautiful. Maddy feels ready to take on the challenge—until New Bison’s mayor is fatally stabbed, and her fingerprints are on the knife. When there’s another murder, she even begins to suspect the one person she has trusted. Maddy’s snarky dialog and clever use of hashtags, along with the irresistible Baby, make this a stand-out.
“Snappy dialogue, a well-drawn supporting cast and an irresistible canine companion all add delicious flavor. Gulp this book down or savor it, but consuming it will guarantee a sustained sugar high.”– The New York Times Book Review
In a brand-new culinary cozy series with a fresh edge and a delightful small-town setting, the acclaimed author introduces Maddy Montgomery, a social media expert who’s #StartingOver in small town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery…and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby.
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book Of 2022
When Maddy Montgomery’s groom is a no-show to their livestream wedding, it’s a disaster…
Masuda Hajimu (family name Masuda) is a historian at the National University of Singapore. He specializes in the modern history of East Asia, the history of American foreign relations, and the social and global history of the Cold War, with particular attention toward ordinary people and their violence, as well as the recurrent rise of grassroots conservatism in the modern world. His most recent publications include: The Early Cold War: Studies of Cold War America in the 21st Century in A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations; “The Social Experience of War and Occupation” in The Cambridge History of Japan (coming in 2022), among others. He has served as a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2017-18); Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2020); and Visiting Scholar at Waseda University (2020).
I like this book because it forces us to rethink what the Cold War really was. The book identifies key figures in anti-communist crusades in post-World War II Detroit: workers, white homeowners, city officials, Catholics, and manufacturing executives, and argues that the core elements of their “anticommunism” were not fears of Soviet incursion, but sociocultural tensions at home that derived from drastic changes in wartime and postwar Detroit, which observed a sudden influx of African Americans, Southern whites, and immigrants.
Thus, the book argues that Cold War Detroit’s “anticommunism” was not a new development in the postwar era, but a continuation of what had previously been labeled anti-unionism, white-supremacism, anti-secular Catholicism, and anti-New deal sentiments, all of which can be characterized as expressions of ongoing “anti-modernist” tensions within American society. Such a reexamination of Cold War anti-communism is significant because it could open up new territory for rethinking what anticommunism…
Detroit's Cold War locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on meticulous archival research focusing on Detroit, Colleen Doody shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit--with its large population of African-American and Catholic immigrant workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape--as a case study, Doody articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics,…
I do not remember a time when I wasn’t captivated by stories about adolescence. This was the case when I myself was a teenager—when I sought in these overwrought sagas the sort of sentimental melodrama that eluded the banality of my own life—but curiously it’s no less true at thirty, for reasons that are fundamentally the same but somehow more urgent. Becoming an adult is an exercise in hardening; to grow up is to forget what it’s like to be beholden to one’s own autobiographical romance.The following titles offer a respite from the cynicism that is adulthood; as a writer and a human, I'm forever in their debt.
I’d normally abstain from the pompous sin of quoting one’s own fiction, but I’m doing it here only to contextualize this recommendation.
“Adolescence is an exercise in coveting what exists just beyond our grasp,” my book’s narrator tells us in his preamble to his telling of Foster’s story. “It is this inaccessibility that sustains its magic.” To be fifteen is to be a voyeur looking wistfully in on the poignancy of others’ lives: this is the idea I tried to operationalize through the narrator’s project, with full knowledge that I’d never do it as lyrically as The Virgin Suicides.
Nominally, the main characters of Eugenides’ debut are the five titular Lisbon sisters, who successively take their own lives, but we encounter them chiefly as figments of a collective imagination: in the captivated minds of a faceless group of teenage boys who witness the tragedies from afar.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
That girl didn't want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme.
The five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric and, now, gone - had always been a point of obsession for the entire neighbourhood.
Although the boys that once loved them from afar have grown up, they remain determined to understand a tragedy that has defied explanation. The…
I love a good, clean mystery/suspense story that's light enough to be escape fiction but has enough heart that I engage with the characters. Let me root for them and watch them grow. Give me hope and a happy ending. Bonus if there are some quirky ones who make me smile or some snappy dialogue. Double bonus if it's Christian fiction with an organic, non-preachy faith element and characters who grow spiritually. Why leave faith out of our fiction if it's part of our lives? I hope you'll make some new imaginary friends in the books I've listed!
I love how nothing fazes Nicole, even when she gets into awkward situations. Her novelty socks (so not lawyerly) and occasional geeky lines make me smile, and I like the friends she finds in the middle of trying to prove—and solve—her uncle's murder.
I always take sides with characters whose parents have manipulated their life's path, so I feel Nicole's conflict over her profession and the distance it causes within her family. She comes into this story feeling like a failure, and I want to see her succeed. Plus, I like the potential for romance with the county medical examiner.
**Mystery/Cozy Gold Medalist in the 2018 IPPY Awards**
**Grand Prize Winner of the 2018 Writer's Digest Ebook Awards**
Sometimes the truth can be a sticky thing…
Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes feels like she’s the only failure amid a family of high achievers. Her last serious boyfriend turned out to be married and her career as a criminal defense attorney is in tatters. When her uncle passes away and leaves her his maple syrup farm in Michigan, she thinks it might be time for a career change—hopefully one that allows her to stay as far away from murderers and liars as possible.
Since I was a tween, I’ve been fascinated by romance. That happily ever after has always taken my breath away. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, suspense and mystery have always surrounded my life, and intertwining these two elements in my own stories was a norm, but reading them was required and loved. I’m a part of several groups that focus on these genres and I share my readings with them along with my own group on Facebook. I know you will enjoy reading these books as much as I have.
I’m always down
for Ms Bev, and jumping into this story ready to be swept up, I definitely got
caught up with every word. This book was filled with sensuality and suspense
throughout each chapter. I will admit I read this book twice.
Beverly Jenkins
is usually a a historical romance writer, but her switch up in a contemporary sub-genre
proved what a powerful writer she is in any genre.
Blackboard bestselling author Beverly Jenkins launches her first contemporary romantic suspense with this exciting sizzler. Sparks fly when Mykal Chandler, the head of a covert government agency, fights to protect the woman he has fallen in love with.
Sarita Grayson is desperate. That’s the only explanation for her late night rendezvous with a bag of stolen diamonds. But then a handsome stranger stands between her and a clean getaway. In the struggle for freedom, she accidentally shoots him.
Mykal Chandler, head of a covert government agency NIA, can’t believe he’s been shot. He’s shocked, he’s furious, but he’s also attracted…
I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging.
I adore this book as it feels deeply woven with the legacy of Octavia Butler: gripping, socially engaged science fiction that is full of brilliant information about how to survive societal collapse.
I appreciate how adrienne shines a light on grief as it relates to the various social conditions that create hardship for folks. This systemic lack of care makes it hard for many folks to have their needs met in life, let alone have a dignified death. I gobbled this book up and was very sad to have finished it.
★ "It’s a strong precedent that will leave readers eager for more." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.
Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following…