Here are 11 books that Terrace Story fans have personally recommended if you like
Terrace Story.
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I am passionate about integrating individual, organizational, and community needs to create a better world for the benefit of us all. I am an author and founder of organizations in the career and workforce development fields. My four books (Affiliation in the Workplace, Building Workforce Strength, Business Behaving Well, and How to Build a Nontraditional Career Path) and much of my career explored bringing work to life for those close to us, for ourselves, for our organizations, and for our communities. My social activism has been expressed through community volunteer work and promoting a range of social causes. I hope you enjoy the books I have chosen for you!
Sometimes, a book brings such a perceptive view that it elicits in me a response of gratitude and respect for the author. It surfaces ideas I long suspected were there but were just beyond grasp.
This is such a book. It shines a bright light on false meritocracy and what that means. I found this book profoundly moving and reaffirming about the important principles inherent in a just society.
A TLS, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
The new bestseller from the acclaimed author of Justice and one of the world's most popular philosophers
"Astute, insightful, and empathetic...A crucial book for this moment" Tara Westover, author of Educated
These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that "you can make it if you try". And the consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has…
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…
In our current political climate, this narrative history of the Bay of Pigs and following nuclear crisis was, odd as it sounds, refreshing. The finesse with with John F. Kennedy handled the crisis was remarkable. I fear what would happen today with our current leaders.
In 1961, the new president John F. Kennendy, inherited an ill-conceived, poorly executed invasion of Cuba that failed miserably and set in motion the events that put the U.S. and the Soviet Union on a collision course that nearly started a war that would have enveloped much of the world.
Extensively researched and vividly imagined, The Shadow of War brings to life the many threads that lead to the building crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962.
Told from a multitude of perspectives and voices, from the Russian engineer attempting the near impossible task of building…
I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.
I spent my summers during college doing odd jobs as a temp, but even readers who’ve never known anything but “the steadiness” at work will enjoy this mythical look at the gig economy.
The unnamed narrator, born from a long line of temps, takes pride in her ability to “accurately replace a person,” whether that’s a pirate, an assassin, or even the chairman of the board. This book is for anyone who’s ever wondered what it would take not just to survive their job but to transcend it.
In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
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…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture.We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background.
Exalted follows two women, Emily, an Internet astrologer, and Dawn, a lesbian waitress looking for a connection of any sort.
Dorn’s writing is sharp and funny as she tracks the way that both women are forced to scrape together a living. I love to see a character at work, and Emily’s wry sense of humor as she manipulates viral trends and conjures somewhat bogus readings is a powerful engine for the story.
As the novel progresses, the main characters’ lives begin to overlap, and you begin to wonder whether some destinies are really written in the stars as any good astrologer would insist.
"A brutally funny and observant ride through astrology culture, love, and self-discovery." —NYLON's Most Anticipated Books of 2022
"A depressed Millennial astrologist, a self-hating lesbian with a rage (and drinking) problem, and profound questions of connection and destiny make Exalted an unforgettable read. Clear your schedule and consult your horoscope because Anna Dorn's novel will make you cackle and gasp, and you won't be able to put it down." —Edan Lepucki
Emily Forrest runs Exalted, the hottest astrology account on Instagram, from her studio apartment in Los Angeles. Burned out on meme-making and listicles, Emily’s passion for astrology is waning…
I'm fascinated by stories about complicated friendships because they speak to our eternal need to be part of something. Everyone wants to have friends, especially when we’re young, but what if those friendships aren’t good for us? What happens when self-interest motivates our social choices? It seems there’s often a fragile boundary between love and hate. This volatile intensity becomes addictive. I'm a Canadian writer with a BA in English from the University of Ottawa. When writing fiction, I love exploring the toxic threads of jealousy, ambition, and obsession that both bind us together and tear us apart.
This is a gorgeously written book about two best friends doing nothing in particular. Isa and Gala arrive in New York City intertwined and allied.
They whirl through all the requisite stops of the party girl layabout lifestyle. I was fascinated by the friendship’s closeness; Isa and Gala know each other’s quirks and fears in staggering intimacy. They function as a unit, as a “we.” Isa’s aimlessly wandering through life, but she isn’t in it alone, and that’s comforting to me.
Together, Isa and Gala turn aimlessness into freedom. It’s a detail-packed, slow-burning portrait of how we build identity together, intertwining ourselves and pushing each other forward.
With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados's stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that's hardly going to stop them…
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…
I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture.We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background.
To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.
At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.
For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting.
Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.
This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written…
I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.
When I picked up Tsumura’s first novel to be translated into English, I’d just given notice at my hectic corporate job. So when the burned-out narrator tells her employment agency she’s looking for an easy job that’s “ideally, something along the lines of sitting all day in a chair,” I could relate.
She searches for that elusive work-life balance at a series of strange positions, but when she lands a plum gig working in a small hut in a forest, the story’s disparate strands weave together into an emotionally satisfying whole.
"[A] 21st-century response to Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'"―NPR
"A revelation."―Time
A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and ideally, very little thinking.
Her first gig--watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods--turns out to be inconvenient. (When can she go to the bathroom?) Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job--writing trivia for rice cracker packages; punching entry tickets…
I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.
Do you have to be captivated by aquariums and otherworldly travel to enjoy this book? No, but if, like me, you’ve always wondered what it would be like to have an octopus for a work wife or a boyfriend who’s moving to Mars, you’ll love Sea Change.
Come for the reality-bending critique of life on Earth; stay for the achingly true-to-life portrait of a daughter of Korean immigrants who’s just trying to make her way in the world.
A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • An enchanting novel about Ro, a woman tossed overboard by heartbreak and loss, who has to find her way back to stable shores with the help of a giant Pacific octopus at the mall aquarium where she works.
“Immersively beautiful.... A kaleidoscope of originality." —Weike Wang, acclaimed author of Joan is Okay
Ro is stuck. She's just entered her thirties, she's estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at the aquarium, and…
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…
14 years ago, I accepted the opportunity of a lifetime. My company moved me to Beijing for a 2 year assignment as Marketing Director for our chocolate gifting business. Before then, I'd never even been to China. During this time of adventure, I learned to navigate the cultural differences, how to speak Mandarin, and new perspectives on my home country of the U.S.
I loved Mobility because it took me back to that time of being an expat. Although Lydia Kiesling's main character doesn't travel to Asia, she beautifully captures the unsettling feeling of being in a foreign place, being aware of one's privilege, and being made aware of heretofore unseen currents moving the world of politics and diplomats. In fact, this time period was so formative that my Goodbye Orchid series sends my character Orchid Paige on a journey to China to feel closer to the memory of her…
“A masterpiece of misdirection.” ―Geraldine Brooks
“Mobility is a truly gripping coming-of-age story about navigating a world of corporate greed that’s both laugh-out-loud funny and politically incisive.” ―Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor
Bunny Glenn believes in climate change. But she also likes to get paid.
The year is 1998. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is a lonely American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s bemused eyes, we watch global interests flock to her temporary backyard for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hearing rumbles of the expansion…
