Here are 100 books that LaRose fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been asked for decades to share my story. Who would want to hear my story? When we established the fund in memory of beloved sisters Margie and Jane, the doctor connected to the fund told me to write about my sisters so others would know them. After thirty years of suppressing my grief, writing became a venue to let the walls down and let my feelings out and be compassionate to myself and others in their grief no matter the time. Grief is a difficult subject and I hope in telling my story another individual will not be alone in their grief.
I am recommending this work of fiction selected by The Compassionate Friends Sibling Grief Book Club. Ann, with grace, handles not only the sibling loss of a brother, a boy the sole survivor of a plane crash, but the depth and breadth of grief from the aunt and uncle Edward lives with. Edward’s aunt grieving the loss of an unborn child and her sister, says to Edward, “You’re not okay. We are not okay. This is not okay.” I’m certain other bereaved siblings can relate, “he mourns what his brother has lost.” I related to how in a family we handle grief differently and often are unable to communicate how we are feeling.
A transcendent coming-of-age story about the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles: there are 192 people aboard. When the plane suddenly crashes, twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor.
In the aftermath, Edward struggles to make sense of his grief, sudden fame and find his place in a world without his family. But then Edward and his neighbour Shay make a startling discovery; hidden in his uncle's garage are letters from the relatives of other passengers - all addressed him.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
There are very few novels written by psychiatrists, and even fewer that accurately show psychiatrists at work. That is one of the major reasons that I wrote The End of Miracles. I’ve been a professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, seen many patients, and taught many psychiatry residents, so I know a good deal about people with mental illness and its treatment. As a novelist, I also wanted to write a book that is exciting and gives pleasure to readers. I think I succeeded. Here are some comments from reader reviews online: “gripping”… ”thought-provoking”… ”spell-binding”… ”illuminating”… “a page-turner”… ”a rich and satisfying read”.
In Ordinary People, the boating-accident death of the older teenage son shatters the family.
Conrad, the younger son who was also on the boat, is tormented by self-blame for his brother’s death. After a suicide attempt and a psychiatric hospitalization, Conrad is released. He is still beset with guilt and depression and begins outpatient treatment with Dr. Berger, a blunt yet also an empathetic psychiatrist.
I like the way he helps Conrad reconsider his unrealistic guilt and helps him look at the limitations of his mother, a parent unable to provide him the warmth and support he needs. I like the way Dr. Berger is portrayed as caring and skilled, an example of how psychiatrists effectively treat their patients.
One of the great bestseller of our time: the novel that inspired Robert Redford's Oscar-winning film starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore
In Ordinary People, Judith Guest's remarkable first novel, the Jarrets are a typical American family. Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have one. In this memorable, moving novel, Judith Guest takes the reader into their lives to share their misunderstandings, pain, and ultimate healing. Ordinary People is an extraordinary novel about an "ordinary" family divided by pain, yet bound by their…
I have always been drawn to the ocean. When I decided to start writing novels, I knew that I wanted to set them in coastal locations. I live in the Boston suburbs and spend time whenever I can at the beach. I have written books centered in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod. I am working on a story set on the north shore of Massachusetts. I am a high school social studies teacher of twenty-four years and a parent of two teenagers. All of my writing includes cooking and the enjoyment of good food as a major focus. I hope my books make you hungry!
Although not coastal, this book’s Palm Springs setting is full of swimming pools and a feeling of escape to somewhere new. I laughed, I cried, and I adored the dynamic between Patrick and his adorable niece and nephew.
Secondary characters, such as the three neighbors and other family members, added depth and emotion to the story. I seriously read this book in 24 hours!
National Bestseller • Wall Street Journal Bestseller • USA Today Bestseller An NPR Book of the Year Semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Finalist for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.
Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
All my work--as a novelist and a licensed clinical therapist--deals with what happens in families, which sometimes includes overwhelming grief. But now, it hasn’t been long since I lost my own son. In these novels, I recognize a piece of myself as I, like any survivor, have struggled to cope. Like few other events in our lives, death has the possibility of completely derailing us with its brutality, and often surviving family cast about blindly, searching for sense, for meaning. Sometimes we can’t find any; sometimes we do, and sometimes we create it ourselves. These novels put different approaches into story, and that, too, is a way to search out direction--and hope.
One of the common reactions to the death of a loved family member–especially any death we perceive to be unnecessary or unnatural–is extreme anger. We have to blame someone, and yes, there’s plenty of reproach and self-recrimination in John Burnham Schwartz’s novel, Reservation Road. But there’s a clear culprit–a hit and run driver–and it seems the police are hardly bothering to investigate, and in a case like that, anyone would have a target for their helpless rage. We see Ethan, a father who witnessed his ten-year-old son killed, become obsessed with tracking down the perpetrator himself to accomplish some justice. I understand that kind of anger and frustration, and I know many others do, too. I think it’s useful to both accept that it’s normal, but to look at how destructive it can become to carry it, and to consider how to let it go.
A tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz's riveting novel "Reservation Road". Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding the unexpected and horrendous death of ten-year-old Josh in a hit and run accident. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college and father of Josh, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with the overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to…
Many of us were taught as children that life isn’t fair. I never accepted this; shouldn’t we do all we can to make life fair? I grew up to be a lifelong activist and a writer for social justice organizations. As a reader and writer, I love books about women’s lives, especially women who realize that the world around them shapes their own experiences. Sometimes history is happening right here, right now—and you know it. Those transformative moments spark the best stories, illuminating each book I’ve recommended.
What I loved most about this book is true of all Louise Erdrich novels: she creates such warm, complicated, fully human characters that I delight in their presence and grieve when I have to leave them at the book’s end.
In this novel, history hit home in a devastating way when the U.S. government in the 1950s decided to solve its “Indian problem” by simply reclassifying Native people as no longer Indian—a kind of paper genocide that wiped out Indigenous people’s cultural identity and tribal rights, such as land rights.
Sadly, this is all historical fact; the fiction comes in when Erdrich re-imagined in riveting detail the (also true) story of how one small tribe in North Dakota fought back.
It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal?
Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie…
I think about the positive identity development of Native youth all the time and not just because I am an educator and author. I love my Ojibwe language and culture, but I want to turn Native fiction on its head. We have so many stories about trauma and tragedy with characters who lament the culture that they were always denied. I want to show how vibrant and alive our culture still is. I want gripping stories where none of the Native characters are drug addicts, rapists, abused, or abusing others. I want to demonstrate the magnificence of our elders, the humor of our people, and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
I love this book because the characters Eli and Nector seem so familiar to me. The plot is full of tension, but the characters are genuinely humorous and affable, much like the elders I know across Ojibwe country.
This book also gives a window into Ojibwe culture. Louise Erdrich is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author, and this isn't even her biggest seller, but it's definitely my personal favorite.
“[Erdrich] captures the passions, fears, myths, and doom of a living people, and she does so with an ease that leaves the reader breathless.”—The New Yorker
From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes an arresting, lyrical novel set in North Dakota at a time when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands.
Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance—yet their pride and humor…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
After graduating with a BA in English, I moved to England to pursue a master’s in Literature and Visual Culture. My focus was on women artists working in London during the Blitz and I wrote my dissertation on Lee Miller, who went on to photograph (and doggedly publish) the liberation of German concentration camps. Later I worked in arts administration and marketing, and didn’t start writing my debut noveluntil I was thirty-five. My work is inspired by my favorite authors from the 1940s:Elizabeth Bowen, Patrick Hamilton, and Penelope Fitzgerald.I’m also drawn to historical fiction about ordinary people in difficult social conditions, especially when there’s a love story involved.
I used to moderate a book club for museum members at what is now the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Love Medicine was chosen by one of our exhibition artists. This astonishing debut is a masterwork about family, poverty, and passion.
The book is set where my grandparents came from, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and illustrates how settlers from Europe (my ancestors) continued to disrupt and destroy Native lives well into the 20th century. Ojibwe spiritual beliefs and Catholicism tangle as tightly as the characters that embody them. Spanning from 1934 to 1985, this novel should not be missed by anyone interested in Native American history.
“The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power.” — Toni Morrison
Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine—the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich—is an epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.
With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter of this stunning novel draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses…
I’ve always loved “big books,” novels that are described as sagas and chronicles yet whose primary focus is on singular, nuanced characters. I like seeing the ways that lives intersect and reflect each other across decades, and I enjoy being immersed in one world and then dropped, with the turn of a page, into another equally engrossing one. I am the author of the novel Rebellion as well as numerous short stories and essays. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, I spent several years living in China and a year as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. I now live in Wisconsin, where I write and teach creative writing.
I can never decide which of Erdrich’s books is my favorite, but The Plague of Doves is definitely a major contender. Erdrich’s novelistic style is more like a chorus than a solo: she presents various stories involving different characters in different times, but the stories are in orbit around the central conflict, in this case, a pair of horrific crimes committed long ago. Yet even when the content is dark, her writing is so beautiful that my primary feeling reading it is joy. For me, the title of this book perfectly captures that contradictory experience.
A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time, and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012
Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Here, everybody is connected - by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.
Growing up on the reservation is Evelina Harp, witty and ambitious, and prone to falling hopelessly in love. Listening to her grandfather's tales, she learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites. Nobody understands it better…
In 1971, when I graduated from law school, I received a fellowship to help staff a Legal Aid office on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I lived there for nearly four years, representing tribal members in tribal, state, and federal courts. I then worked for 45 years on the National Legal Staff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One of my major responsibilities was helping Indian tribes and their members protect and enforce their rights, and I filed numerous cases on their behalf. During that time, I taught Federal Indian Law for more than 20 years and also published The Rights of Indians and Tribes.
This novel won the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. Written by a Native author about reservation life, it discusses a crime that occurred that—like many reservation crimes—went unsolved for a long time.
The book is informative and compelling, and it weaves Native practices and culture into the story. I found it particularly interesting because it includes characters and themes that resonated with my experiences.
Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book
From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My new book, I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven, is among other things, a love letter to heavy metal. I am a lifelong music obsessive: a record collector, concertgoer, maker of mixtapes, sewer of patch jackets. When I’m not writing or reading I’m playing guitar with the amp turned all the way up. And I have the tinnitus to prove it. Some of the books on this list are about metal, others are simply imbued with its rebellious dionysian spirit. But every damn one of them goes to 11, I can assure you of that. Enjoy!
The cutest book I’ve ever read about being a fan. Warm and softhearted, Chuck’s writing is literary comfort food.
A music and sports journalist turned memoirist, this is his misty-eyed look back at childhood. Like an episode of The Wonder Years all about Hair Metal. You can substitute Hair Metal for anything chronically un-cool that you ever fell in love with.
It’s a gleeful defence of the dork inside, a reminder that taste is subjective, that fashions come and go, that when we poo-poo things we’re denying ourselves potential enjoyment. There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Pleasure is pleasure, and there isn’t enough of it in this sorry world.
So, curl up with Klosterman and enjoy what you enjoy.
Powered by a sharp and wholly original voice, Chuck Klosterman delivers a real-life High Fidelity in this savvy, deliriously funny memoir of growing up a shameless heavy-metal devotee in 1980s North Dakota. The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. But he's got problems. For one, he's in the fifth grade. For another, he's mired in rural North Dakota. Worst of all, his parents aren't exactly down with the long hairstyle which said rocking requires. Luckily, his brother saves the day when he brings home a bit of manna from metal heaven, Shout at the Devil, Motley…
