Fans pick 100 books like Little Children

This book is about defending justice, using a legal system to fight something you know is wrong, and sticking to what is right at all costs. It is about knowing what’s right and what’s wrong.

My main character, too—Miss Pink sticks to what is right at all costs. This touching, powerful story shows the worst of people and the best. 

White Oleander, the 2002 film, was one of the most shocking and nuanced depictions of motherhood I had ever seen onscreen—I had to read the book. What most transfixed me about the story is, on the surface, Astrid’s mother and foster mothers had everything society tells you should make life a cakewalk: beauty, ingenuity, and, in one case, wealth.

But the truth is, they are all battling a host of demons, ultimately blessing and cursing Astrid with their flawed, life-worn wisdom. Even still, I love that author Janet Fitch never sacrifices the women to easy “bad mother” stereotypes. It’s clear each mother is mostly doing the best she knows how to outsmart a world riddled with traps.

Breathless is Warman’s first full-length novel, perhaps lesser known than some of her others, and it’s a brilliant example of coming to age. Warman’s style is propulsive and character-driven. Katie, often overlooked due to the attention her older brother requires, is forced to make her own way in the world. She attends boarding school and finds family among people to whom she has no biological relation.

I first met Warman while earning a master’s degree in writing alongside her.  Needless to say, I learned as much from her as from our instructors. Her ability to throw a reader into immediate conflict, as well as her talent to put one at ease, is notable—especially here, where her young protagonist navigates a crooked path to the promise of happiness.

To say Guccione influences me would be an understatement, as she was one of my first mentors in the industry. The Chick Palace is unusual, in that it’s centered around the back nine of life—after children are grown, and after aging parents are no longer a responsibility, when the time has come for women to focus on themselves. However, Guccione’s usual colorful characters and robust setting will take you on a vacation well deserved in this era, not to mention in the brutal cold of winter. 

The same goes for Trespassing’s Veronica, in a sense. She’s at a crossroads, and perhaps for the first time, she’s making decisions without the influence of a man. Add to that the backdrop of Key West, and you’ll find yourself on a mental retreat.

I read that Matt Weiner wouldn’t have had the courage to write Mad Men if he’d read this before he worked on the series.

Revolutionary Road is set in the world of New York advertising during the martini lunch era, and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn’t exactly have that Singin’ in the Rain optimism, but it’s darkly hilarious. The opening scene is literary perfection, set at the dress rehearsal for the Laurel Players.

Yates masterfully captures that Waiting for Guffman sincerity (and inherent comedy) of community theater, and the novel sets the stage for the deeply human tale of longing. It is deeply American and deeply perfect.

I love smart thrillers like The Practice of Deceit—thrillers that keep me turning the pages even if my alarm is going off early the next morning; thrillers that don’t rely on violence to propel the story forward but rather on interesting, richly drawn, complex characters who are not portrayed in black and white.

Charming bachelor Eric Lavender, a psychotherapist, falls for Colleen O’Brien Golden, a lawyer, but when a conflict of interest with Colleen’s client implodes Eric’s idyllic suburban life as a husband and father to an adorable stepdaughter and a newborn, he learns the dark truth about Colleen’s past. Eric’s flaw is, to me, the one that makes a character most sympathetic—being blinded by love and desire. I love that this book is in the male point of view, and it’s done so well that when Colleen tries to destroy Eric, it is a gut punch.

New sections of cities, new neighborhoods, and big infrastructure projects are aspirational for societies. They aren’t just about problem-solving. In this great book, historian Robert Fishman shows how London and Paris developed differently because they had different ideals and different aspirations.

As it began to grow due to industrialization in the late 18th century, London prioritized the development of townhouses, its urban ideal. This caused it to become a sprawling, low-rise city. Paris developed in the mid-19th century as a city of glamorous, stylish apartment buildings because this was Paris’s ideal.

Parisians valued the street and cultural life that apartment life generated. The title of this book is off-putting for me because it sounds so academic. But Fishman, a trained historian, writes well and gives you big ideas and details in a readable package. 

This book is engaging because it shows how the base of the Democratic party has changed since Franklin Roosevelt first assembled the New Deal political coalition in the 1930s. 

Today, it is increasingly the party of college-educated suburban voters and reflects their cultural and political priorities. From the Great Depression until the 1960s, however, working-class urban voters formed the heart of the party. Geismer uses metropolitan Boston as a template to depict this important transition, which helped produce suburban candidates such as Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, whose political career emerged from and was shaped by his life in Brookline, MA.  

This book brings together economics, education, and urban development by showing how our public policies advantaged wealthy suburbanites over less wealthy urban dwellers after World War II. Many people think there is a natural migration to the suburbs after couples have children. Jackson does a masterful job of showing why that is not the natural order of things. It is the result of specific policy choices such as how we fund infrastructure, what tax incentives we provide, who has access to credit, and how we draw political boundaries. His insights offer a blueprint for a more equitable society.

Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, children without mothers, traverse air-conditioned buildings and desert landscapes, strewn with symbols and signs of mortality—from the preservation of those teetering on the brink of death at a nursing home to a wildlife museum full of taxidermies; and these teenagers are orbited by agitated, confused adults who seem wholly unaware of the strangeness—and messages—defining their lives. Joy Williams is a master at dark humor in literary fiction, and The Quick and the Dead is one of her finest achievements.