Here are 100 books that The Lions Of Fifth Avenue fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lions Of Fifth Avenue.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I was the ten-year-old child who devoured David Copperfield (and then every other Dickens book), the teenager who began a lifelong love of Russian literature after discovering Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. To this day, my greatest reading pleasure is to lose (and find) myself in the rich, expansive world of a nineteenth-century novel. In my contemporary rom-com, Blame It on the Brontës, my heroine is torn between her literary ideal of love and the reality of losing the love of her life. To paraphrase Keats, she tries to reconcile “the truth of imagination” with “the holiness of the heart’s affections.” As a romance writer, it is my quest, too.
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre follows the format of a romance novel: a governess falls in love with her employer, they overcome impediments, and they live happily ever after. Add a madwoman in the attic, Thornfield Hall in flames, and Mr. Rochester’s voice calling to Jane across the winds, and you have an unforgettable romance novel.
I admire Jane immensely. Her journey from being a suffering student at Lowood School to an independent woman is as relevant as ever. Through every experience, she asserts her autonomy but never wavers in her moral compass.
In Brontë’s world, love involves every fiber of one’s being, not just emotions or desire. Mr. Rochester is a complex, conflicted man who proves himself worthy of Jane’s love. For me, they have set the standard of the romantic heroine and hero.
Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Canterbury Christ Church University College.
Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage.
She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester.
I’ve always had a passion for wounded heroes and strong heroines. My earliest memories are reading books where the heroine saves the day. I’ve never wanted the heroine to need the hero in order to make her life complete. Even as a child, when my dad read me books at night—one of my favorite memories—I preferred stories where the heroine saved the day. As an adult, I’ve loved to read stories where the hero is brave enough to show his vulnerable side, and when I decided to become a writer, those were the books I wanted to write.
Her books are all a delight to read. They are fun, witty, and smart.
Her heroines are strong, her heroes—even the ones who start out as questionable—end up being amazing book boyfriends, and I’m always drawn into her stories. She’s a great example of redeeming the hero and this book was one of my favorites.
A MAN OF SIN Devastatingly handsome. Vain. Unscrupulous. Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery, is the man London whispers about in boudoirs and back alleys. A notorious rake and blackmailer, Montgomery has returned from exile, intent on seeking revenge on those who have wronged him. But what he finds in his own bedroom may lay waste to all his plans. A WOMAN OF HONOUR Born a bastard, housekeeper Bridget Crumb is clever, bold and fiercely loyal. When her aristocratic mother becomes the target of extortion, Bridget joins the Duke of Montgomery's household to search for the incriminating evidence - and…
I’ve always had a passion for wounded heroes and strong heroines. My earliest memories are reading books where the heroine saves the day. I’ve never wanted the heroine to need the hero in order to make her life complete. Even as a child, when my dad read me books at night—one of my favorite memories—I preferred stories where the heroine saved the day. As an adult, I’ve loved to read stories where the hero is brave enough to show his vulnerable side, and when I decided to become a writer, those were the books I wanted to write.
Another wounded hero book, but I’m choosing this one because not only is it one of my favorites from the series, but Lynn Kurland packs so much emotion into every page that I cry and laugh and live the book while I’m reading it and long after.
It’s time travel (but they always seem to bring chocolate with them ☺ ) and the love is so strong. Her stories are like catnip.
From Lynn Kurland, the New York Times bestselling author of the Nine Kingdom series.
Set near the Scottish border at a rugged castle on the edge of the sea, this is the story of a courageous lord who lost everything he held dear. Of a strong young woman willing to sacrifice everything for happiness. Two lost souls who find in each other a reason to live again, to laugh again, and to love for the first time...
I’ve always had a passion for wounded heroes and strong heroines. My earliest memories are reading books where the heroine saves the day. I’ve never wanted the heroine to need the hero in order to make her life complete. Even as a child, when my dad read me books at night—one of my favorite memories—I preferred stories where the heroine saved the day. As an adult, I’ve loved to read stories where the hero is brave enough to show his vulnerable side, and when I decided to become a writer, those were the books I wanted to write.
I adored this book! This is what happens if all of the characters from Jane Austen’s books got together for a house party, and one of them murders Mr. Wickham, a universally despised character.
The mystery reminds me of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and the multiple character POV’s are terrific! Plus, the relatively modern twist of empowering the young (and slightly odd) characters was fantastic to watch.
A summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when Jane Austen's Mr. Wickham—one of literature’s most notorious villains—meets a sudden and suspicious end in this brilliantly imagined mystery featuring Austen’s leading literary characters.
“Had Jane Austen sat down to write a country house murder mystery, this is exactly the book she would have written.” —Alexander McCall Smith
The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a party at their country estate, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even…
I have been a reader and a writer for as long as I can remember, so books about reading, writing, and storytelling have always interested me. As a school library media specialist for over 30 years, I have read thousands of picture books and placed wonderful books in the hands of thousands of young people. Several of these books were mentor texts when I wrote my picture book biography. I want young people to be inspired to read and write, and I hope these books will do that for the adults who select them and the children who read them.
I have always been fascinated by storytelling, and this book about a librarian pleases me so! What I especially love about this book is the metaphoric writing device of planting story seeds and how Pura Belpré, storyteller, puppeteer, and New York City’s first Puerto Rican librarian, shared her tales from her homeland along her journey.
The lyrical writing captures the magic of Belpré’s stories, inspiring readers to read and write.
FOLLOW LA VIDA Y EL LEGADO OF PURA BELPRE, THE FIRST PUERTO RICAN LIBRARIAN IN NEW YORK CITY
When she came to America in 1921, Pura carried the cuentos folkloricos of her Puerto Rican homeland. Finding a new home at the New York Public Library as a bilingual assistant, she turned her popular retellings into libros and spread story seeds across the land. Today, these seeds have grown into a lush landscape as generations of children and storytellers continue to share her tales and celebrate Pura's legacy.
This portrait of the influential librarian, author, and puppeteer reminds us of the…
My life has always been intertwined with plants. As a kid I would explore the old cemetery behind our back garden, where I would climb trees and swing from branches, pretending I was in the rainforest. I amassed quite a collection of natural history books too. I’d pore over them, memorise the names of the plants they contained, and copy the pictures, scribble them all down on paper; I think I always knew I would write and illustrate books myself one day. Today, as a botanist, I am fortunate to see beautiful plants in their natural habitats all around the world. I seek to capture the beauty I see in words.
This is a satisfyingly large tome with sumptuous prints and illustrations from ancient texts, gardens, and herbals that spill out on every page and give it a sort of timelessness. Flicking through it now, the page that opened in front of me features a facsimile of a 1748 book, complete with foxing; it is so real I could reach out and touch it. This is something I’d put on top of the coffee table book pile and feel happier just to know it’s there, replete with its botanical treasure.
An exquisitely illustrated volume in celebration of the world's foremost library of botanical works
The renowned LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden counts among its holdings many of the most beautiful and pioneering botanical and horticultural works ever created. More than eight centuries of knowledge, from the twelfth century to the present, are represented in the library's collection of over one million items. In this sumptuously illustrated volume, international experts introduce us to some of the library's most fascinating works-exceedingly rare books, stunning botanical artworks, handwritten manuscripts, Renaissance herbals, nursery catalogs, explorers' notebooks, and more. The…
My father came from Ukraine, and every summer took the family to stay on a farm in an immigrant community in southern New Jersey, Carmel, a community begun by the Baron de Hirsch Foundation, which settled Jews from all over Europe. Italian immigrants also settled there. I lived in a family that spoke to their siblings in three languages, Yiddish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Hence, I was privy to the loves and losses of people who felt estranged from their language and often yearned to return to their country of origin.
Tough Jews is a short history of Jewish-American gangsters and their Italian colleagues with whom they made common cause. It is here for the first time that we understand why Arnold Rothstein was the most important gangster in America. Having introduced "organized" into organized crime, he promised underworld figures the help of the famous attorney William Fallon if they landed in trouble and agreed to look after their families if they got sent up the Hudson (to Sing Sing). I am struck by the fact that Cohen makes his history personal, by means of his own contacts with the people who know the inside story of how the Jewish gangsters thrived—or didn't. He sits down with them; he eats with them; and he gets them to remember how it once was in the days of Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond, and Arnold Rothstein.
Award-winning writer Rich Cohen excavates the real stories behind the legend of infamous criminal enforcers Murder, Inc. and contemplates the question: Where did the tough Jews go?
In 1930s Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who now exist only in legend and in the memories of a few old-timers: Jewish gangsters, fearless thugs with nicknames like Kid Twist Reles and Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Growing up in Brownsville, they made their way from street fights to underworld power, becoming the execution squad for a national crime syndicate. Murder Inc. did for organized crime what Henry Ford did for the automobile,…
Most of my public success has been as a novelist. My MFA, from the Iowa Writers Workshop, is in poetry. When I grow up, I want to be a short story writer. The dirty truth is, though, I’ve been making trouble with stories since I was a kid. During my first attempt in 10th grade, I wrote a story that got me suspended for two weeks. No explanation. No guidance. Just a conference between my parents, teachers, and principal (I wasn’t present), and they came out and banished me. I dropped out of school shortly after. I reckon that experience, both shameful and delicious, shaped my life and love of narrative.
The complexities of the human, the whole human. That’s what Paley explores. How we think, how we act and feel, how we play and fight, how we talk. And talk. Paley is a master of nuance, and often reveals her mastery through dialogue. There is always a convincing urgency in the way her characters speak, and a delicious talking-around a thing, an idea. Her worlds richly detailed and urban. I’d like to live in the apartment building of Grace Paley’s mind.
This reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection—a finalist for the National Book Award—demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again.
Whether writing about the love (and conflict) between parents and children or between husband and wife, or about the struggles of aging single mothers or disheartened political organizers to make sense of the world, she brings the same unerring ear for the rhythm of life as it is actually lived.
The Collected Stories is a 1994 National Book Award Finalist…
I’d written modern true crime before—a book that helped solve a 40-year-old cold case—and wanted to try my hand at historical true crime. I live in Manhattan, home to the greatest crime stories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so I was able to see the actual locations where the grisliest murders, the biggest bank heists, and the crookedest con games took place. What really drew me in, though, were the many colorful, unforgettable characters, both good and bad, cops and robbers, who walked the bustling streets of Old New York during the fascinating era known as the Gilded Age.
If you read one biography/memoir of a Gilded Age criminal, make it this one. It tells the story (often in his own words) of the celebrated pickpocket George Appo, an odd little half-Chinese, half-Irish, one-eyed fellow who could make $800 in a few days when most working men made less than that in a year. Appo would rivet New Yorkers when he testified about his second career as a “green goods” con man, working to swindle gullible out-of-towners who came to buy purported counterfeit money at a discount, only to discover that there was nothing but sawdust inside the packages they carried away. Appo refused to name names, though, as he was a self-described “good fellow.”
In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as…
When I was a young girl, I was lucky to have friends from all over the world, so learning about a new country or a new city always fascinated me, and it still does. I’m always trying to learn new things, meet new people and whenever I can I like to travel the world. As a writer and illustrator, it’s always nice to experience new things, it helps to expand my imagination. I hope this list inspires you not only to read but to learn a few things here and there.
Anyone who is curious about other cities and cultures will love the complete series of the This Is… books by Miroslav Sasek. They are filled with exciting facts and the colorful illustrations are truly delightful. From New York, to London, to Hong Kong, and many more, these books will inspire you to travel the world!
With the same wit and perception that distinguished his stylish books on Paris, London, and Rome, M. Sasek pictures fabulous, big-hearted New York City in This Is New York, first published in 1960 and now updated for the 21st century. The Dutchman who bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americnas in 1626 for twenty-four dollars' worth of handy housewares little knew that his was the biggest bargain in American history. For everything about New York is big -- the buildings, the traffic jams, the cars, the stories, the Sunday papers. Here is the Staten Island Ferry, the Statute…
