Here are 71 books that Shopgirl fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a career financial and business journalist, only recently turned novelist. I’m obsessed with the way that history repeats itself in the financial markets and that we never seem to learn our lessons. Fear and greed have always driven the behavior of bankers, traders, and investors; and they still do today, only barely inhibited by our regulatory system. I want to help people understand how markets work, and I like combining fiction with fact to explain these systems and how they’re abused. With that in mind, I work during the day as a reporter at NPR and by night as a scribbler of historical fiction with a financial twist.
I love the way Wolfe brings one of the more arcane areas of the financial markets to life - namely bankruptcy workout - and skewers the greed and ambition of real estate investors in the 1990s.
I’m a huge admirer of Wolfe’s technique of writing a novel using journalistic interviews, and I’m struck by the way he nails the characters and actions when he describes how the bankruptcy process works. And all while keeping the reader absolutely hooked on the narrative.
I go back to Wolfe’s novels again and again, not just to be amused and entertained but to get a real insight into the dark heart and often absurd workings of the financial system.
A dissection of greed-obsessed America a decade after The Bonfire of the Vanities and on the cusp of the millennium, from the master chronicler of American culture Tom Wolfe
Charlie Croker, once a fabled college football star, is now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real estate entrepreneur-turned conglomerate king. His expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000 acre quail shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife and a half-empty downtown tower with a staggering load of debt. Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
As a writer, wife, and mom, I love reading novels and memoirs about women who are navigating parenting, relationships, and careers simultaneously. My favorites are those that make me laugh out loud while presenting a relatable picture of all this juggling act entails. Smart and witty heroines who approach life with a can-do spirit and the ability to laugh at themselves as the world tosses one curveball after another their way capture my heart every time.
Who can resist a diary? It’s hard not to fall in love with the title character, who’s on a perpetual quest for self-improvement. As Bridget, a lovable thirty-something singleton, finds herself in dozens of entertaining and embarrassing situations, she navigates them with her trademark pluck.
Very loosely based on Pride and Prejudice and complete with its own Mr. Darcy, I adored this novel and yearned for Bridget to realize she’s a catch exactly as she is. I read this at a time in my life when I, too, was a work in progress, and finding Bridget felt like connecting with a funny friend.
A dazzlingly urban satire on modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something?
As Bridget documents her struggles through the social minefield of her thirties and tries to weigh up the eternal question (Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?), she turns for support to four indispensable friends: Shazzer, Jude, Tom and a bottle of chardonnay.
Welcome to Bridget's first diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly touching and utterly addictive.
Helen Fielding's first Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, sparked a phenomenon that has seen…
I moved to New York when I was 15 and fell in love with the city. I was starting high school then, and arriving in Manhattan felt like the world opened up to me. Suddenly, I could ride the subway anywhere I wanted, see the best theater in the world, and feel as if anything was possible. The female journey has also been a topic I have long been fascinated by, and when I began my journalism career and became a wife and mother, the need to explore those dynamics grew ever more pressing. I recommend these books because they combine my two favorite topics—New York and women’s history.
I can’t get enough of this novel about a group of young women making their way into the world of publishing in New York City. A window into what it was like to find a career, fall in love, and negotiate life as a single woman in the big city in the 1950s, Rona Jaffe’s book was a watershed when it was published in 1958. I think it should be required reading for all women, regardless of whether they work in publishing, or have ever lived in New York.
Who are you, and why do you have expertise or a passion for the topic/theme/mood of the book list you created?
Rona Jaffe's beloved novel about 1950s NYC women in the workplace that paved the way for the #MeToo movement and iconic cultural touchstones like Sex and the City and Mad Men, now for the first time in Penguin Classics, in a 65th anniversary edition with an introduction by New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme
A Penguin Classic
When Rona Jaffe’s superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Sixty-five…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
When I was a child, I grew up in a very crowded house in suburbia with three sisters. Reading was the best way to escape all the mayhem. By the age of eight I was reading my parents’ novels, whatever books I could find. I wanted to move to a big city like the ones in their novels. At night I would tell myself Cinderella-type stories where I lived in a fabulous apartment and got to be the heroine. I took a class at Harvard Extension, and the professor read my story aloud to the group. From that day on I was hooked.
I was driving across country to move to Miami. When we stopped in Austin, I picked up a copy of Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe.
I was thrilled to find a novel about the city I was moving to. A thick book meticulously researched I settled back and immersed myself into a brilliant novel about multicultural Miami. The Cuban police officer, a Creole professor, Russian criminals, artists from Miami Art Basel, retired New York Yentas, and many more call Miami home.
It was a great primer for my move. That first year I went to Art Basel, visited Little Havana for pastries, and celebrated my birthday at a Russian nightclub all because of Back to Blood.
As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay - with officer Nestor Camacho on board - Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, an ambitious young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; a psychiatrist who specialises in sex addiction and his Latina nurse by day, mistress by night - until lately, the love of Nestor's life; a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti and her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin' little brother; a billionaire porn addict, crack dealers in the `hoods, `de-skilled' conceptual artists at the Miami…
I'm a journalist, fiction writer, and screenwriter, as well as the author of ten books, the most recent of which isCreative Types and Other Stories, which will be published later this year. Along with Neil Cross, I developed for televisionThe Mosquito Coast, based on Paul Theroux’s novel, which is now showing on Apple TV. Currently, I live with my family in Los Angeles.
This is a memoir about being a writer—and failing. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappreciated (Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby), and notorious (Warren Zevon, Michael Cimino), while always circling back to his own benighted Hollywood upbringing, complete with a lovely tribute to his mother, a failed screenwriter. This is an angry, sad, but always somehow joyful book about not hitting it big, and I've never read anything quite like it.
"[An] absorbing and revealing book. . . . nestling in the fruitful terrain between memoir and criticism." ―Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage
Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment.
In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood…
Growing up, there was nothing I hated more than reading. Struggling with dyslexia and learning disabilities made books miserable and the distractions of screens didn’t help. However, everything changed when I discovered graphic novels and comics! That led to a newfound love of stories and books (especially graphic novels) which took me on a journey of not being able to read at age ten, to publishing my first novel at age fifteen. Since then, I’ve written and illustrated children’s books and young adult novels, but Mup is my first graphic novel. This has inspired me to create more graphic novels designed specifically for those who are just like me – reluctant readers.
This list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t add a superhero comic. But instead of Spiderman or Captain America, I want to introduce you to Runaways. A middle-grade graphic novel comic series about six Los Angeles teenagers who join together after discovering that their supervillain parents are planning on destroying the world. What could be more fun than a bunch of random teenagers banding together to try and save the world while trying to grapple with their place in it? Dinosaurs, aliens, mutant powers, grocery shopping, crushes, and turning eighteen, it’s a lot to handle and is certainly very fun to read – even for a someone who doesn’t like reading. Plus, if a reader makes it to the end, they’re rewarded with unforeseen plot twists.
They were six normal teenagers linked only by their wealthy parents’ annual business meeting…until a chance discovery revealed the shocking truth: their parents are the secret criminal society known as the Pride! For years, the Pride controlled of Los Angeles’ criminal activity, ruling the city with an iron fist…and now, with their true natures exposed, the Pride will take any measures necessary to protect their organization — even if it means taking out their own children! Now on the run from their villainous parents, Nico, Chase, Karolina, Gertrude, Molly and Alex have only each other to…
My father estranged himself from his sister because she was an alcoholic. I never met my aunt. However, when looking for a strong character for my Lilian Dove Mystery Series, I decided this aunt was a good mentoring character. Fictionally, I gave my aunt sobriety, but her recovery is not so much from drinking as it is recovering from the past to take on life anew. The mysteries Lillian Dove becomes involved her help her see how to do this. And first, she needs to learn to admit life is full of mayhem. Small-town Iowa amateur sleuth who ends up owning a liquor store.
Joyce Carol Oates is
genuinely an extraordinary author, known for her prolific
output. While some writers focus on series, Oats dedicates her time to
crafting numerous standalone books, each a gem in its own right.
The
plot may appear simple at first glance—a missing sister, and a
protagonist who must piece together the clues to find
her. However, as the story unfolds, the reader becomes immersed in a
web of subtle evidence that gradually weaves together, resulting in a
rich and suspenseful novel. Put the book down.
When a woman mysteriously vanishes from her small town home, her sister must tally up the clues to uncover the truth behind the mystery.
Beautiful sculptor Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for some fun? Or did she finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities?
Younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite's vanishing. The police puzzle over the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots, which…
I love history and I love to laugh. That’s why I brand myself as a writer of Victorian Whodunits with a touch of humor. I’ve spent decades learning about 1800s America. I began sharing that knowledge by performing in costume as real women of history. But I couldn’t be on stage all the time so I began writing the books I want to read, books that entertain while sticking to the basic facts of history and giving the flavor of an earlier time. I seek that great marriage of words that brings readers to a new understanding. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite
intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole
book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond
society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a
book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.
It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise them behind covers of more domestically-appropriate reading. She could match wits with Sherlock Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals.
Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles, Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department. There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate. Seizing her…
I've been an avid reader of murder mysteries since I was a kid when my grandmother gave me my first Agatha Christie novel for Christmas. What I love about Christie and the books I’ve picked here is that just when you think you have the whole thing figured out, the writers give you a big SMACK up side the head. So, whether the mysteries are cozies, courtroom dramas or femme noir, they all give you that moment toward the end where you cry out loud, “No way!” and then flip furiously back through the pages to see how you missed it.
What a wild ride! Author Susie Black didn’t let me off this roller coaster until I’d twisted and turned my way through a fantastic whodunit.
The tenacious amateur sleuth, Holly Schlivinik, is VP of sales at Ditzy Swimwear, and right out of the chute, she’s in a mess of a murder. Both friends and foes are implicated, and even Holly herself looks suspicious.
The writing is witty, fast paced and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. There’s also a great group of women called the yentas, who both support Holly and have no problem telling her when she’s lost her mind. With this being the first in a series of Holly Swimsuit Mysteries, I’m going to put the kettle on and settle in for the mayhem to come.
Everyone wanted her dead…but who actually killed her? The last thing swimwear sales exec Holly Schlivnik expected was to discover ruthless buying office big wig Bunny Frank's corpse trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey with a bikini stuffed down her throat. When Holly's colleague is arrested for Bunny's murder, the wise-cracking, irreverent amateur sleuth jumps into action to find the real killer. Nothing turns out the way Holly thinks it will as she matches wits with a wily murderer hellbent for revenge.
Why do I have expertise in end-of-the-world scenarios? Well, I am a person living in the 2020s who reads too much. But more than that, I’ve had an interest in space exploration and history for as long as I can remember. While those two might seem like completely unrelated fields, it gives me a wider view of our world in the sense of where we are and where we are going. Civilization is not always a straight line upward. And when it dips down… well interesting things happen. Saturnius Mons specifically blends my love of Roman history with my interest in humanity’s future.
What can you say about the book that kicked off a whole new genre?
Widely regarded as the first ‘cyberpunk’ novel, reading Virtual Light today is beyond eery. It takes place in the dystopian future year of 2006 (the book was written in 1994) and is set in San Francisco during a time when the middle class has disappeared and the only people left are either disgustingly rich or living on the street. And as I look around at what San Francisco, and many other cities have become, it makes me think that Gibson might be the Cassandra of the modern world.
NEW YORK TIMES bestseller * 2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California.
The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich-or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart…
