Here are 100 books that Little fans have personally recommended if you like
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Right from an early age, I have always been interested in the fallibility of the human condition, being particularly conscious of my own faults. People who are too good to be true are of little interest, except that I want to know their faults or their secrets. I have found myself drawn to complex characters, those who have good and bad characteristics, and some of the novels and movies that I have enjoyed most feature such characters. In my career as a lawyer, I have met all kinds of people who have made bad decisions or suffered misfortune, and it has always been a pleasure trying to help them.
I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.
I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.
'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd
Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
In trademark Vonnegut fashion, Bluebeard uses humor to juxtapose the horror and violence of World War II. In this way, it is similar to Slaughterhouse-Five.
However, Vonnegut skewers the art movement born out of the war’s aftermath: abstract expressionism. Bluebeard is the story of Rabo Karabekian (who first appeared in Breakfast of Champions), a war veteran and failed illustrator who accidentally found success as a contemporary of Rothko and Pollock. At the end of his life, he’s ready to unveil one final secret locked away in a damp potato barn.
“Ranks with Vonnegut’s best and goes one step beyond . . . joyous, soaring fiction.”—The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.
Praise for Bluebeard
“Vonnegut is at his edifying best.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
This posthumously published novel is the last offering from the punk rocker, poet, and writer Jim Carrol. Carrol was a friend of Patti Smith and Andy Warhol and a product of the New York City art scene in the 1970s and 1980s.
The central character is Billy, a successful painter with such deep artistic sensitivities that navigating small things like relationships, his health, and earning money is crushingly difficult. The book reads like an allegory as much novel as moving characters through action seems a secondary aim. In this way, it reminds me of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist.
A moving, vividly rendered novel from the late author of The Basketball Diaries.
When poet, musician, and diarist Jim Carroll died in September 2009, he was putting the finishing touches on a potent work of fiction. The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, an enigmatic thirty- eight-year-old artist who has become a hot star in the late-1980s New York art scene. As the novel opens, Billy, after viewing a show of Velázquez paintings, is so humbled and awed by their spiritual power that he suffers an emotional breakdown and withdraws to his Chelsea loft. In seclusion, Billy searches…
I have been fascinated by Napoleon and the French Revolution since I was a teenager. Novels that capture the essence of the struggles of the French people – and especially those that feature Napoleon as a highly layered character – have always called to me. As a Jewish author, I am particularly drawn to a fair representation of Jewish characters in these tales – which frankly, Georgette Heyer does not, as she adheres to stereotypes in describing any Jewish characters. (I only forgive her because her books are so brilliant.)
A thrilling and fully immersive description of the French Revolution; I loved this book in particular for its moving description of how the Jews of Paris were affected.
I found Madame Tussand’s story to be a wonderful frame for the upheaval in France at the time – especially as a highly layered, wonderful character whose strong personality helped her to survive troubling times.
It’s definitely my favorite Michelle Moran book – and that’s tough, considering how many amazing historical novels she’s written.
I am a French novelist, the author of fifteen novels, many of which are memoirs, so I am considered a specialist of "autofiction" in France, of fiction written about oneself. But I also love writing about others, as you can see in my novel on David Hockney. Beauvoir, Sarraute and Ernaux were my models, Laurens and Appanah are my colleagues. Three of the books I picked would be called memoirs in the States, and the other two novels. In France, they are in the same category. All these women write beautifully about childhood and womanhood. I love their writing because it is both intimate and universal, full of emotion, but in a very sober and precise style.
I was immediately engaged in the story of a nurse who follows a man to Mayotte and, unable to conceive, adopts a child whom she brings up by herself after the man abandons her. She dies abruptly, however, and the story changes completely, turning into an intense, violent novel about children in the slums. The orphan who fled after his mother's death is horribly abused by another young teenager who is a gang leader, and can free himself only by killing him in the end. I am in awe of Nathacha Appanah for her ability to capture the voice of street children. This is a poignant, powerful, and beautifully written novel about harassment, cruelty, and possession.
Marie, a nurse on the island of Mayotte, adopts an abandoned baby and names him Moise, raising him as a French boy. As he grows up, Moise struggles with his status as an "outsider" and to understand why he was abandoned as a baby. When Marie dies, he is left alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil, ending up in the largest and most infamous slum on Mayotte, nicknamed "Gaza".
Narrated by five different characters, Tropic of Violence is an exploration of lost youth on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Shining a powerful light on problems of…
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
I am a spy aiming to uncover hidden documents, private journals, and secret messages penned in the distant past. I am a detective racing to reveal the world’s most dastardly deeds and daring escapades. I am an adventurer zooming around the planet along with history’s bravest heroes and most despicable villains. I am an artist whose illustrations transform ancient stone-cold statues by turning them into living, breathing human beings that laugh and cry, win and lose, love and hate, and spring vividly to life. And I am a storyteller striving to lure readers of all ages, whether they are children or adults.
Don’t worry; this gripping 534-page tale of mystery can sweep you through its pages in a single day, especially since its gritty-but-stunning brown and white artwork acts like a movie as it speeds you and a young orphaned boy through an underground train station and across the streets of Paris and up a clock tower in 1931. Why was the boy’s dead father obsessed with repairing a broken clock? And who is the mysterious angry old man anyway?
Orphan, clock keeper, thief: Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. Combining elements of picture book, graphic novel, and film, Caldecott Honor artist Selznick breaks open the novel form to create an entirely new reading experience in this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.
I love Paris. It is one of my favorite cities on Earth. One of the reasons I adore it so much is because it has such a palpable sense of enchantment. There is magic in its cathedrals and catacombs, its pâtisseries and feal markets, its rich tradition of art and joie de vivre. You can feel it in your soul as you walk through the city, under the gazes of its gargoyles and the charm of its cafes. Thus, I’ve always been drawn to stories that take this one step further—exploring a Paris that harbors actual magic.
This story is set in one of the most intriguing periods of Parisian history, starting at the cusp of the French Revolution. I loved how Gita Trelease introduced magic into the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Every detail, from the dresses to the pastries, is imbued with enchantments, while the darkness of the impending revolution serves as a taut backdrop.
A compellingly beautiful tale of magic, intrigue and deception, set against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Paris on the cusp of revolution.
Paris in 1789 is a labyrinth of twisted streets, filled with beggars, thieves, revolutionaries - and magicians . . . When seventeen-year-old Camille is left orphaned, she has to provide for her frail sister and her volatile brother. In desperation, she survives by using the petty magic she learnt from her mother. But when her brother disappears Camille decides to pursue a richer, more dangerous mark: the glittering court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
I am a French-American writer with a passion for young adult stories and flawed female characters. Born and raised in France in a household without a TV, I spent my entire childhood reading avidly, which in turn led me to study Literature and Film. In fact, most of my life, I have been inspired by novels that offer windows into new worlds that open up possibilities. Some of the novels from the list below feature some of my favorite characters, and provide insights into other worlds and other times.
In a pair of sumptuous drawing rooms, one in a Parisian mansion, the other in a chateau on a luxurious estate, two aristocrats are very bored. Through a collection of letters, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, former lovers, recount to each other how they pass the time: by using seduction as a weapon in dangerous games.
A French classic, this novel depicts the French aristocracy’s decadence, shortly before the French Revolution. It is also fascinating in its portrayal of a deeply flawed and complex female protagonist, who refuses to accept her place in the society of that time, where she is “doomed to silence and inaction”.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a frightening and ultimately scathing portrait of a decadent society that was first published in 1782, only a few years before the French Revolution. At its centre are two aristocrats who were once lovers and who now play a complex game of manipulation and seduction to liven up their dreary lives. The Vicomte de Valmont is tasked by the Marquise de Merteuil with seducing an innocent convent girl, but he is equally focused on a righteous married woman. The results, however, turn out to be more dire and fatal than Merteuil and Valmont could have imagined…
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
I have lived in Gettysburg, PA, all of my life, so I’m drawn to historical fiction, especially the Civil War era. The 1860s is the perfect setting for the enemies-to-lovers trope, and I am lucky enough to be surrounded by history all of the time. In doing lots of research, I have found that enemies fell in love more often than you might think during the Civil War. I hope you enjoy this list of books that got me interested in reading and continue to keep my attention to this day.
My grandmother had this novel on her bookshelf, which is why I read it the first time, but I’ve read it over and over. This is my favorite classic love story that is not really enemies to lovers, but still has lots of emotion and conflict.
I love it because of the conflict and for its educational value in teaching about the French Revolution.
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"Vaguely she began to wonder ... which of these worldly men round her was the mysterious 'Scarlet Pimpernel,' who held the threads of such daring plots, and the fate of valuable lives in his hands."
In the early days of the bloody French Revolution, fleeing aristocrats are being captured and sent to the guillotine. But the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel - along with his band of English gentlemen - is outwitting the revolutionaries. Known only by his calling card, he arrives in disguise and smuggles the nobles out of…
