Foreign cultures have always intrigued me. I am a Midwesterner who lived for several years in Latin America, teaching English and later doing field work in anthropology. As a young woman, I lived through a violent coup d’état in Chile, and I drew on that experience when I later wrote about political upheaval in Guatemala. A Ph.D. in anthropology gave me the opportunity to spend time in Guatemala and Mexico, some of it in Mayan towns. My love of historical fiction stems from my desire to enter and understand other worlds, and I am grateful to authors who spin their magic to bring far-off places and times to life.
This is a darkly beautiful novel, set in the period after the American Revolution, a time of great hardship for many Americans. Hannah Trevor has lost her husband and three children, and she cobbles out an independent if marginal life for herself as a midwife in rural Maine. She finds love with a married man, and when he is falsely accused of rape and murder, Hannah sets out to uncover the truth. I was drawn in by Lawrence’s striking prose and by Hannah, who is strong, resourceful, and in many ways, a loner.
Hanna Trevor, a midwife in 1780s Maine, is drawn into the investigation into the rape and murder of a young woman when an honorable man--her former lover and the father of her child, is accused of the crime. Reprint.
I’ve dealt with depression from a young age. Books like these make me feel better because they give me the time to focus on someone else dealing with similar (or worse) feelings without minimizing my own circumstances. Or perhaps, is it schadenfreude? I have no idea! Huge warning, though. This list mixes some really dark stuff. Please proceed with caution. But I did throw some sweet ones in there, too, as a treat!
My god, the cover picked me up so quickly, and the story is just as beautiful as that painting. I think about everyone I’ve known as a child, what they might have been going through in their lives, and how they evolved as adults, just like me.
To hear about a friend who took their own life and realize that what you have seen over a decade ago had something to do with it is so gut-wrenching. It makes me want to back and hug every sad kid I was friends with. Huge trigger warnings for rape and suicide.
Shiino is an ill-tempered office assistant, but when her friend Mariko diesunexpectedly, she becomes determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.Portraying the soulful connection between girls, this is a striking story ofsisterhood and romance.
Two things are true about me: I’m fascinated by the early twentieth century and I'm a diehard feminist. My grandfather nurtured my love of the 1920s and 1930s by introducing me to Dorothy Parker, John O’Hara, Ella Fitzgerald, and The New Yorker. My mother, a petite woman who can wield a welder like few others, encouraged the development of my feminist sensibilities. These two parts came together when my father offhandedly mentioned that his grandmother had an unplanned pregnancy during the Great Depression. As I researched reproductive issues through the years, my fascination for the topic grew. Each of the books here takes a different view of how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.
I felt an almost voyeuristic pleasure in reading The Book of Essie. Seventeen-year-old Essie Hicks is the daughter of an Evangelical pastor, whose family is the subject of a reality television series, Six for Hicks. Essie, as the youngest, has had her entire life aired for their adoring public. As you can guess, when Essie finds herself pregnant no one is thrilled. Essie’s future is determined by her mother and the TV producers: Essie needs to marry. How Essie takes control of the situation and the secrets that are revealed make for a gripping read.
ALEX AWARD WINNER FINALIST FOR THE 2018 NEW ENGLAND BOOK AWARD
"Both timelessly beautiful and unbelievably timely." —Chris Bohjalian, New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant
Esther Ann Hicks—Essie—is the youngest child on Six for Hicks, a reality television phenomenon. She's grown up in the spotlight, idolized and despised for her family's fire-and-brimstone brand of faith. So when Essie’s mother, Celia, discovers that Essie is pregnant, she immediately arranges an emergency meeting with the show’s producers. Do they sneak Essie out of the country for an abortion? Pass the child off as Celia’s? Or do they…
I have been fascinated by the Second World War since I was a child. I grew up with tales of London and Coventry in wartime, stories of family separation, rationing, and air raids. The stories that really gripped me included the streams of refugees passing my grandmother’s house in the suburbs of Coventry after that city was bombed, and the night my aunts and (infant) father spent waiting to be rescued from a bombed house in south London. As a historian I wanted to know more about stories like this, and about the ways that wars shape lives, and my books have returned again and again to the civilian experience of war.
This isn’t an easy read, but it’s an important one. A diary by an anonymous female journalist trapped in Berlin as bombs fall and the Red Army closes in, it describes in graphic detail her struggle for survival between April and June 1945. Berlin’s women had difficult choices to make in this period, and the author records unflinchingly her decision to choose the ‘protection’ of one Russian soldier over repeated rape by multiple others. It is one of the few books that tell us about war from the perspective of civilian women, immersing us in their world and recording the impact of political leaders’ delusions of grandeur and glory on individual lives. I didn’t find this an easy book to pick up, but found it even harder to put down.
This is a devastating book. It is matter-of-fact, makes no attempt to score political points, does not attempt to solicit sympathy for its protagonist and yet is among the most chilling indictments of war I have ever read. Everybody, in particular every woman ought to read it' - Arundhati Roy
'One of the most important personal accounts ever written about the effects of war and defeat' - Antony Beevor
Between April 20th and June 22nd 1945 the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin wrote about life within the falling city as it was sacked by the Russian Army. Fending…
Men have always been attracted to young women, who possess a glow that their mothers have possibly lost. Girls are more vulnerable and impressionable and are more likely to believe what they are told. Their passionate desire to be loved, combined with their conviction that no one understands them, makes them uniquely vulnerable to predators. But there is another side to the story. Girls do not passively wait to be seduced or exploited. They thrill in actively testing their own sexual power and often put themselves in physical and emotional danger with no understanding of the long-term consequences of relationships where the power dynamic leaves them exposed to exploitation and abuse.
It’s a very clever, very funny novella about a talented literary editor,
Quin, told alternately in his own voice and by a long-term friend of
his, Margot.
Margot defends and normalises his behaviour towards women
until she is forced to reassess his actions in the light of numerous
accusations, all of which fall short of actual assault or rape, sex, or
even touching. Is he an abuser? Or is he just a playful, overgrown
manchild who thrives on emotionally intense and intimate friendships
with women?
I loved the book because it refuses to answer the question
definitively.
In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
In 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored wife of a naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape.
The trial loosed a storm of racist hatred and sexual hysteria nationwide (Hearst papers, I’m looking at you). But the evidence was scant – for one thing, she almost certainly had not been raped – and the trial ended in a hung jury.
Outraged that she hadn’t been believed, Thalia’s husband, mother, and friends then kidnapped and murdered one of the Native Hawaiian defendants as an “honor killing.” Caught in the act, the Massies got Clarence Darrow to defend them.
He lost at trial but, scandalously, the all-white killers were released within hours. During the two years these events played out, racial divisions in Hawaiʻi became re-aligned – the concept of “locals” was born, embracing all nonwhite ethnic groups for the first time, and all in opposition to haoles…
In the fall of 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored, aristocratic wife of a young naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape. The ensuing trial let loose a storm of racial and sexual hysteria, but the case against the suspects was scant and the trial ended in a hung jury. Outraged, Thalia’s socialite mother arranged the kidnapping and murder of one of the suspects. In the spectacularly publicized trial that followed, Clarence Darrow came to Hawai’i to defend Thalia’s mother, a sorry epitaph to a noble career.
I grew up with a single mother, lots of siblings, and little money. Books were my escape from reality. My love for reading began at an early age, back in the Babysitting Club days. I started writing as a girl but never thought it was something I would show other people. I kept my nose stuck in any book I could get my hands on, my favorites have become psychological thrillers. After spending decades in the medical field, I decided that it was time for me to write again. Once I completed my first novel and sent it out to agents, I quickly learned that I was right where I needed to be.
I am a long-time Fisher fan, and I love all of her books, but this one really spoke to me. So much pain and brutality trapped inside one girl makes you think of many different scenarios, none of which are what happens. Fisher creates amazing stories with fascinating twists and turns, but this one tops the cake. Gripping and graphic to the point that you forget you are reading fiction. I love unhappy and open endings that make you think and question what you just read; this one just might be my favorite.
In the Bone there is a house. In the house there is a girl. In the girl there is a darkness. Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn’t spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It’s not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes…
I understand how stressful it is to be a teenager today. And we’re talking stress across a variety of fronts, from academics to personal matters and everything in between. In my book on college admissions, I advise high schoolers to use data so they can get the most value from their university education as well as reduce the anxiety of what can be an overwhelming process. In my book recommendations, I’ve chosen novels the teenaged me thought honestly depicted the emotional challenges teenagers face and how those challenges are resolved. Whether it be applying to college or developing relationships, the key is to be authentic in who you are!
As a child of Japanese immigrants, I did well in school and led a
pretty tidy existence. But I was an adventurous reader, curious about
how other teenagers led their lives. This book – wow! The title alone
drew me in.
The “hamburger” refers to the advice a young woman is given to distract a man who is “on the make.” But the woman —and the reader—quickly
learn going out for a burger doesn’t neutralize a teenager’s lust.
Certainly, issues surrounding sex, pregnancy, and societal expectations
have changed significantly over the years, so some language and
circumstances in this novel don’t age well.
What remains true is the
empathy with which the author depicts his characters and the honesty in
how he depicts the complexities of making choices and growing up.
Four friends, Two couples, One year that will change their lives.
Liz and Sean, both beautiful and popular, are madly in love and completely misunderstood by their parents. Their best friends, Maggie and Dennis, are shy and awkward, but willing to take the first tentative steps toward a romance of their own. Yet before either couple can enjoy true happiness, life conspires against them, threatening to destroy their friendships completely.
I am adopted. I am a birth mother and also a mother through adoption. I have lived through all ‘three faces’ of adoption and know how each ‘face’ affects millions of people's lives all over the world. I am passionate that conversations around adoption need to come out of the closet and the secrecy surrounding the subject must disappear. By writing my books, I am on a mission to support adoptees, birth mothers, and adoptive parents and help them realise they are not alone. After publication of my first book in the Survival Without Roots trilogy, I am humbled that people are reaching out to say that reading Book One has helped them so much.
Fiona leaves no stone unturned as she describes the journey of her years dabbling with drugs and alcohol brought on by the trauma of growing up adopted. Fiona shows a true spirit of determination to fight through her adoption traumas of rejection and abandonment. I wondered all the way through this book whether she would succeed or if her experiences would eventually be too much for one person to bear.
The true-life story of Fiona who always felt displaced, a girl looking for belonging and security. This is Me No Darkness Too Deep, explores the ups and downs when as a young woman she roller-coasted, travelling from city to city and meeting trouble at every stop. Fiona spent many years in the depths of dark and desolate places, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. She was beaten, she slept rough and was used and abused and endured the horrors of rape. Carrying the weight of being an adoptee meant that she struggled through abandonment and rejection issues.
I am a scholar of international human rights and comparative genocide studies. My father was a refugee from the Holocaust. So I was always interested in genocide, but I did not want to be another Holocaust scholar. Instead, I introduced one of the first university courses in Canada on comparative genocide studies. From a very young age, I was also very interested in social justice: I was seven when Emmett Till was murdered in the US. So when I became a professor, I decided to specialize in international human rights. I read a lot of “world literature” fiction that helps me to empathize with people in places I’ve never been.
This 1975 feminist discussion really opened my eyes when I was a young scholar to how pervasive rape is all over the world.
Brownmiller discusses rape during war, during pogroms, and during persecutions of various kinds. She focuses on sexual violence against Blacks during slavery, and against American “Indians,” as they were then called.
She also discusses prison rape and sexual violence against children. She investigates the literature on the psychology both of rapists, and of victims of rape. Although much has changed since 1975, this is a classic that anyone interested in the history of feminism, or the history of rape, should read.
The bestselling feminist classic that revolutionized the way we think about rape, as a historical phenomenon and as an urgent crisis—essential reading in the era of #MeToo.
“A major work of history.”—The Village Voice • One of the New York Public Library’s 100 Books of the Century
As powerful and timely now as when it was first published, Against Our Will stands as a unique document of the history, politics, and sociology of rape and the inherent and ingrained inequality of men and women under the law. Fact by fact, Susan Brownmiller pulls back the centuries of damaging lies and…
