More Great Reads [ Edited ]

[Jessica]

Additional Recommended Reading

Riding Lessons Sara Gruen Twenty years after a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and the beautiful horse she cherished, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father's New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, with her troubled teenage daughter in tow, the ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables. But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime.

Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, grow up under the haphazard care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. Their struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.

Bastard out of Carolina Dorothy Allison This fiercely moving, unforgettable first novel tells the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright -- called Bone by her family -- a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Bone's story is inseparable from that of her family, the notorious Boatwright clan. This tender yet disturbing tale is a harrowing story of family violence and incest that is "simply stunning."

I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith Seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Over six turbulent months, Cassandra hones her writing skills, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries, chronicling the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love.

The Member of the Wedding Carson McCullers Twelve-year-old Frankie is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother's wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with her house servant, Berenice, and her six-year-old male cousin -- not to mention her own unbridled imagination -- Frankie takes on an overly active role in the wedding, hoping even to go, uninvited, on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be the member of something larger, more accepting than herself.

The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around the afternoon her mother was killed. When Rosaleen, Lily's only friend, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to leave town. In their travels, they're taken in by an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.

Message Edited by Bill_T on 06-06-2007 03:31 PM