Here are 87 books that Girls with Bright Futures fans have personally recommended if you like
Girls with Bright Futures.
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I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
This novel exemplifies parenting fiction in my mind. It takes a concept I could’ve read about in a nonfiction parenting book (how to handle teenage drinking) and slides it into a compelling narrative that realistically depicts all the potential complexities and nuances in the parenting decisions and how they might play out, including several factors and consequences related to teen alcohol use and parent-sponsored parties that I would’ve never thought of myself.
Two mothers face the consequences of their choices in a gripping novel about friendship, family, and forgiveness by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Jamie Beck.
Grace first met Mimi when she blew into their sons' toddler playgroup like a warm bay breeze that loosened Grace's tight spaces. Despite differing approaches to life and parenting, the fast friends raised their kids together while cementing a sisterlike bond that neither believed could be broken. But when a string of ill-fated decisions results in a teen party with a tragic outcome for Grace's son, the friendship is ripped apart and…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
Somebody’s Daughter is a thought-provoking read for parents on how you might handle an inappropriate video of your child being shared over social media. One of the most intriguing parenting aspects of this book is how the mom and dad dealt with their daughter’s dilemma so differently. Especially since the mom almost viewed the dad’s way of handling it as detrimental. It offered an invaluable gut-check on what I would do if I were put in the same situation.
From USA Today bestselling author Rochelle B. Weinstein comes an emotional novel for mothers, daughters, and anyone who has ever felt imperfect.
Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community.
Then, on the night of the girls' fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe's heartbreaking mistake-a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
You and Me and Us tackles several intriguing parenting challenges between a mother and her 14-year-old daughter as they lose someone they both love. It also depicts the normal parenting tightrope in dealing with teens wanting greater independence and what happens when their goals are different from their parents. An added bonus is the book is written in dual POV, alternating between the teen and parent perspectives, so readers can gain a better understanding from both sides of the issues.
"Hammer is an expert at both tugging heartstrings and keeping the reader utterly immersed in a world of hope and heartbreak. A great new voice in women's fiction."-- Kristin Harmel, #1 international bestselling author of The Winemaker's Wife
The heartbreaking, yet hopeful, story of a mother and daughter struggling to be a family without the one person who holds them together-a perfect summer read for fans of Jojo Moyes and Marisa de los Santos.
Alexis Gold knows how to put the "work" in working mom. It's the "mom" part that she's been struggling with lately. Since opening her own advertising…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
West has authored three books that I’d consider parenting fiction, but this one is my favorite. The main storyline follows a mom as she struggles to parent her teenager through his impulsive decisions and public failures. It also explores how a child’s behaviors or actions can often feel like a reflection on their parents. West is an expert in writing multiple POV novels, so readers get to understand these issues from every angle.
"A breezy yet affecting read filled with struggle and hope."—People A Good Day LA Pick
Among fake Instagram pages, long-buried family secrets, and the horrors of middle school, one suburban mom searches to find herself.
Alice Sullivan feels like she’s finally found her groove in middle age, but it only takes one moment for her perfectly curated life to unravel. On the same day she learns her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin.
When it comes to light that the incident is part of a…
When each of our older boys were in the midst of the college admissions process, our husbands suffered life-threatening health crises. It was such a bizarre coincidence that we both experienced intense brushes with mortality during this time of high anxiety. The juxtaposition between health and college admissions gave us a unique perspective and led us to explore the impacts of college admissions anxiety on families, friendships, students, and school communities. We had entirely plottedGirls With Bright Futuresand were nearly through the first draft when the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal broke in March 2019. We felt like the headlines had been ripped from our manuscript!
This well-researched non-fiction book by powerhouse investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte of Fast Company provides a fascinating look at some of the behind-the-scenes, real-world parenting dynamics that set the stage for Operation Varsity Blues. In addition to all the juicy details LaPorte reveals about Los Angeles’ elite private school ecosystem, we particularly love the way she traces the origins of college admissions mania all the way back to kindergarten. If you’ve ever wondered how community group-think can lead to lawlessness and a total abandonment of ethics and values, Guilty Admissions takes readers on a tantalizing journey into the competitive-parenting abyss, LA-style.
GUILTY ADMISSIONS weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with pre-school; non-stop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.
Investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte lays bare the source of this…
I am passionate about talent development and college access. I started my journey as a researcher when I learned that high school valedictorians’ adult success depends in large part on their race, social class, and gender. This work led me to life-long questions. How do we recognize talent and give young people opportunities without requiring their total assimilation into the dominant culture? How do we change our schools and colleges to welcome everyone and to benefit from the viewpoints and voices of all of our students? Answering these questions is imperative for our collective well-being in our changing society and world.
I loved this novel, in which a former Princeton admission officer actually made me feel sorry for the staff members who have to choose who gets into the Ivy League!
The protagonist winds up in the kinds of ethical and practical tangles that ensnare would-be do-gooders as we try to “help the disadvantaged.” And it’s a rollicking good read!
From the New York Times bestselling author of You Should Have Known (adapted as The Undoing on HBO), comes a page-turner about a college admissions officer with a secret—now a major motion picture starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.
For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a Princeton University admissions officer and her dependable domestic life. Her reluctance to confront the truth is suddenly overwhelmed by the resurfacing of a life-altering decision, and Portia is faced with an extraordinary test. Just as thousands of the nation's brightest students await…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.
When I became a dean, I bought a few books on being a dean, and for some time, even after my term ended, continued to follow the literature.
Most such advice is commonsensical, but one needs to be reminded of common sense. The Academic Deanship offers a thoughtful and often wise account of the broader responsibilities and daily work of deans. Chairpersons, who work closely with deans, might also benefit from its perspectives.
A deanship is now seen as more of a phase in an overall academic career than as a permanent shift from teaching to administration. In fact, the nature of the job itself has changed, as has the range of likely options at the end of a dean's tenure. This book serves as a guide for the aspiring or new dean, offering practical advice on how to approach the interview process and the new job, as well as providing a thoughtful assessment of the deanship in its wider context. The authors-both experienced academic deans at a variety of institutions-encourage the new…
As an EFL Professor for over 20 years, I have evolved from a language teacher into a generalist who is constantly asked to teach skills-based courses that help my college students learn life skills like presenting or job skills. As the old saying goes, you need to become somewhat of an expert in something to teach it well so I have become a much more proficient interviewer and job skills expert through 10+ years teaching students to excel in these areas. My book is a compilation of the best worksheets and activities compiled and created for my students and I hope others find them as useful and effective as my students have.
This workbook offers a quick and easy guide to help you understand your strengths and sell them effectively to an employer.
It covers all the tools of a job search: resumes, cover letters, networking, and more. It gives invaluable tips on job applications and how to effectively interview. It also covers how to negotiate about pay and working conditions- and when not to through easy-to-use worksheets.
However, it is somewhat outdated so it will not take to the next level that a 21st-century worker might need to succeed.
My fascination with the relationship between Rome and America grows out of the work I have done on early American culture, contemporary political thought, and ancient Rome. My most recent work, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging, took shape through a lot of conversations over the years with friends and colleagues about the different tensions I saw in Roman politics and culture around questions of national identity, tensions that I saw being played out in the United States. I don’t like tidy histories. I am drawn to explorations of politics and culture that reveal the anxieties and dissonance that derive from our own attempt to resolve our incompleteness.
Winterer provides the classic discussion of the place of Rome (and then Greece) in early American education and intellectual life. The book is about how American classicists sought to shape a relationship to the classical past that persists to this day, creating a canon of ancient texts as a reaction against and refuge from modernity. The real payoff of this book for me lies in showing how the past is never just the past but a continuing aspect of our own identity-formation.
Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in the nineteenth century and now lies at the core of contemporary controversies. By closely examining university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Winterer demonstrates how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization, persuasively arguing that we cannot understand both the rise of…
Return to Hope Creek is a second-chance rural romance set in Australia.
Stella Simpson's career and engagement are over. She returns to the rural community of Hope Creek to heal, unaware her high school and college sweetheart, Mitchell Scott, has also moved back to town to do some healing of…
The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.
When I received tenure in 1990, I bought this book for myself as a gift.
I thought that now that my university, at the time Ohio State, had agreed to invest in me, I should think more seriously about the idea of a university. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is lively, colorful, and witty. Written by the former dean of arts and sciences at Harvard, the book offers a wide-ranging overview of the American university.
Even if some of the statistics are dated, this book remains one of the most appealing introductions to, and overviews of, the American research university.
A view of America's colleges and universities and how they are run, the challenges they face and the issues that affect their "owners" - students, faculty, alumni, trustees and others. Among the issues covered are tenure, the admission process in elite institutions and curriculum.
