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 1) "Pride and Prejudice", by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is Jane's Austen's earliest work, and in some senses also one of her
most mature works. Austen began writing the novel in 1796 at the age of twenty-one, under the title First Impressions. The
original version of the novel was probably in the form of an exchange of letters. Austen's father had offered he manuscript
for publication in 1797, but the publishing company refused to even consider it. Shortly after completing First Impressions,
Austen began writing Sense and Sensibility, which was not published until 1811. She also wrote some minor works during that
time, which were later expanded into full novels. Between 1810 and 1812 Pride and Prejudice was rewritten for publication.
While the original ideas of the novel come from a girl of 21, the final version has the literary and thematic maturity of
a thirty-five year old woman who has spent years painstakingly drafting and revising, as is the pattern with all of Austen's
works. Pride and Prejudice is usually considered to be the most popular of Austen's novels.
 2) "The King's General", by Daphne du Maurier
"Menabilly stands bare and desolate on the Cornish coast, its ivy-covered walls hiding the secret which two people will
carry to their graves: Honor Harris, so injured as a girl that she never walked again, and Sir Richard Grenvile, the King's
General in the West, resentful, proud, bitter to the end. The only man Honor ever loved. She saw him for the first time on
the night of her eighteenth birthday at the Duke of Buckingham's ball. Richard was already a veteran of foreign wars and on
his way to fame and power. She bade him a final farewell years later when, his cause lost and Menabilly surrounded by the
forces of the enemy, he vanished through a secret passage from her life..." Light soiling to cover. Fraying to outer edges
of pages. Dust jacket has a lot of wear and tear, almost torn in half.
 3) " Rebecca", by Daphne du Maurier
Written with a deep intensity of emotion, it carries the reader headlong in its current to its final dramatic climax.
The spirit of the dead mistress of Manderlay hovers over the story, dominating the living until, in the end, her sinister
spell is broken forever.
Rebecca is known to millions through its outstandingly successful stage and screen versions; and the characters in this
timeless romance are hauntingly real. Brilliantly conceived. masterfully executed. Daphne du Maurier's unforgettable tale
of love. mystery and suspense is a story-telling triumph that will be read and re-read.
 4) "Terms of Endearment", by Larry McMurtry
This is one of my big faves !!! Sometimes I think that I'm a mix of Emma and Aurora Greenway, the two unforgettable
characters created by Larry McMurtry.
Aurora is the kind of woman who makes the whole world orbit around her, including a string of devoted suitors. Widowed
and overprotective of her daughter, Emma, Aurora adapts at her own pace until life sends two enormous challenges her
way: Emma's hasty marriage and subsequent battle with cancer. This is a story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter
and their struggle to find the courage and humor to live through life's hazards -- and to love each other as never before.
Emma is one of the most compassionate human beings - She is depicted as unfailingly kind, a devoted mother and friend. Aurora
is sassy, spunky, self-centered, controlling and slightly sex crazed. Two fascinating characters you’ll want to
get to know better.
 5) " Beloved", by Toni Morrison
Beloved’ is the tale of Sethe, a survivor of slavery, and her family. Sethe is an escaped slave who made the split
second decision to kill her daughter, rather than have her return to a life of enslavement. The entire novel revolves around
this horrific act; the entire story is slowly unraveled through the remembrances of Sethe and others.
 6) "The Marble Dance" ( Ciranda de Pedra), by Lygia Fagundes Telles
"Ciranda de Pedra" tells the story of 1940s Brazil's high society with all its excesses and prejudices. Virginia
goes to live with her father, the rich judge Laércio Prado, and her two other sisters, Bruna and Otávia, after living
most of her life in a poor home with her mother, Laura, who's on the brink of total madness, and her sweet father-in-law,
Daniel. It is when this simple girl arrives at her father's mansion that she is confronted with the worst kind of prejudices
and hatred possible by her own father, her sisters, and especially, her sisters' governess, Frau Herta. Virginia
must constantly fight this high society that treats her as an outsider, in the process she finds love, and discovers the secret
of her family and herself. This one touched on everything: child abuse, psychological abuse, mental illness, you name it.
At the end, though, it proved that love conquers all. 9 out of 10. Check it out if you have the chance.
Lygia Fagundes Telles was born on April 19, 1923 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was educated at various institutions
and obtained degrees in physical education and law. Telles is a lawyer and author, as well as the president of Brazilian Cinematheque.
She has received numerous awards for her work and completed her first novel in 1938, when she was just fifteen years old.
Her stories center on Brazil's middle and upper classes. "Ciranda de Pedra" (1954) is my favorite book by LFT.
 7) "The Color Purple", by Alice Walker
Alice Walker's The Color Purple, published in 1982, tells the story of Celie, a Black woman
in the South. Celie writes letters to God in which she tells about her life--her roles as daughter, wife, sister, and mother.
In the course of her story, Celie meets a series of other Black women who shape her life: Nettie, Celie's sister, who becomes
a missionary teacher in Africa; Shug Avery, the Blues singer her husband Mr. ______ is in love with, and who becomes Celie's
salvation; Sofia, the strong-willed daughter-in-law whose strength and courage inspire Celie; and Squeak, who goes through
awakenings of her own. Throughout the story, though, Celie is the center of this community of women, the one who knows how
to survive.
 8) " Hatter's Castle", by A.J.Cronin
"Hatter's Castle" (1935) is a novel by the Scottish writer
A.J.Cronin. It is set in the fictional Scottish town of Levenford on the Clyde estuary and tells the story
of a hatter called James Brodie whose pride and arrogance gradually destroy his family and life. It was made into a successful
movie in 1941.
 9 ) "Great Expectations", by Charles Dickens
This novel was one of its Charles Dickens' greatest critical and popular successes. The first-person
narrative relates the coming-of-age of Pip (Philip Pirrip). Reared in the marshes of Kent by his disagreeable sister and her
sweet-natured husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, the young Pip one day helps a convict to escape. Later he is sent to live
with Miss Havisham, a woman driven half-mad years earlier by her lover's departure on their wedding day. Her other ward is
the orphaned Estella, whom she is teaching to torment men with her beauty. Pip, at first cautious, later falls in love with
Estella, to his misfortune. When an anonymous benefactor makes it possible for Pip to go to London for an education, he credits
Miss Havisham. He begins to look down on his humble roots, but nonetheless Estella spurns him again and marries instead the
ill-tempered Bentley Drummle. Pip's benefactor turns out to have been Abel Magwitch, the convict he once aided, who dies awaiting
trial after Pip is unable to help him a second time. Joe rescues Pip from despair and nurses him back to health.
I've recently finished reading:
1)  "Property", by Valerie Martin
Manon Gaudet is unhappily married
to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle
of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves
around Sarah, a slave girl who may have been given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is
living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie. This private drama is being played out against a brooding atmosphere
of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon's house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn
...Beautifully written, Property is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change,
where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.
 2) "The Devil Wears Prada", by Lauren Weisberger
A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most
impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses.
Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the
job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously
successful editor of Runway magazine.
3) "The Pianist", by Wladyslaw
Szpilman
Written immediately after the end
of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw
under the Nazi occupation. "Things you hardly noticed before took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid armchair,
the soothing look of a white-tiled stove," writes Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist for Polish radio when the Germans invaded.
His mother's insistence on laying the table with clean linen for their midday meal, even as conditions for Jews worsened daily,
makes palpable the Holocaust's abstract horror. Arbitrarily removed from the transport that took his family to certain death,
Szpilman does not deny the "animal fear" that led him to seize this chance for escape, nor does he cheapen his emotions by
belaboring them. Yet his cool prose contains plenty of biting rage, mostly buried in scathing asides (a Jewish doctor spared
consignment to "the most wonderful of all gas chambers," for example). Szpilman found compassion in unlikely people, including
a German officer who brought food and warm clothing to his hiding place during the war's last days. Extracts from the officer's
wartime diary (added to this new edition), with their expressions of outrage at his fellow soldiers' behavior, remind us to
be wary of general condemnation of any group. --(Wendy Smith)
 4) "Grave's End",
by Elaine Mercado
This book is the
true story of how one family tried to cope with living in a haunted house. It also describes how, with the help of parapsychologist
Dr. Hans Holzer and medium Marisa Anderson, the family discovered the tragic and heartbreaking secrets buried in the house
at Grave's End.
I'm reading:
 1 ) "Dealing with people who make your life miserable", by Dr. Lilian Glass
Certain people seem to exist to make us miserable. Glass, a California "communications expert," terms these
terrors Toxic People and identifies 30 types, some with humorous labels such as the Smiling Two-Faced Sneaky Back-Stabber
and the Eddie Haskell. She provides a Toxic People Quiz to help readers identify which category a suspect toxic terror falls
into and suggests 10 techniques to handle these folk: Humor, Direct Confront, Calm Questioning, Give-Them-Hell-and-Yell, Love
and Kindness, Vicarious Fantasy, etc. And since we're all toxic, to some degree, a section on Toxic Comments and a Toxic Image
Inventory are offered to help readers identify their own destructive behaviors. While the book doesn't rise above pop psychology,
it is entertaining.
 2) "In Her Shoes", by Jennifer Weiner
The Feller sisters are equal but opposite. Maggie is the good-looking, dyslexic little sister who knows how to get anything
she wants--but not how to keep it. She "felt as if somewhere between the ages of fourteen and sixteen she'd walked off the
edge of a cliff and had been falling ever since." Rose is the plump, practical, responsible older sister who knows about law
but not much about her own happiness: "What did she like, besides shoes, and Jim, and foods that were bad for her?" When Maggie's
latest eviction lands her in Rose's apartment, and Maggie insults Rose by seducing one of her sister's rare boyfriends, what
follows is a chain of events by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Embarrassed Rose evicts Maggie and begins a work sabbatical
leading to a new livelihood and way of living. Maggie flees and runs away to Princeton. Masquerading as a student, she learns
to love poetry and saves money for a trip to Miami--and a visit to a long-lost grandmother named Ella who might offer her
a last shot at sanctuary. But In Her Shoes, the second novel from Good in Bed author Jennifer Weiner, is about
more than the sisters' latest sibling rivalry; Maggie and Rose must sort out the childhood vulnerabilities and family mysteries
that still linger two decades after their mother's death. In less capable hands, the plot might grow corny, but Weiner's humor
and affection for the characters ultimately helps them transcend both neuroses and grief and learn the redemptive power of
love. -Jane Hodges --
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