4 Books Like The Great Mann

Sixteen-year-old Adeline Siow and her single mother live together in 1972 Singapore. Mother is part owner of a high-end department store. Beautiful, bratty and smart, Adeline attends a private girls school. She and her mother have a unique talent. Through thoughts and hand motions, they can make fire emerge from their fingertips. Mother dies suddenly in a massive home fire when Adeline is away. Soon Adeline learns that her mother led a secret life as leader of twenty or more Red Butterfly girls, each of whom came from poverty and abuse but now can wield the fire power. Madeline’s mother was the “conduit” for the Red Butterfly goddess to interact with the real world. Madeline is the only survivor with her mother’s bloodline to sustain the fire goddess’s power.
Wen-Yi-Lee masterfully transports readers into the chaotic multi-cultural island nation, just seven years old. Wealth and poverty run side by side,… show more.

Dickey Chappelle (1919-1965) was America’s first female professional war photographer. This fictionalized account honors her life, devoted to showing the brutal human costs of armed conflicts. “I want to get the picture to end all wars,” she says at a late-career speaking engagement. Dickey rises above her peers from early on. MIT offers her a full scholarship; she’s one of the first women admitted there. She quits school to become a pilot, but bad vision blunts that goal. She trains with the US Marines and, though only five feet tall, keeps up with them in most exercises. She is the first American woman to parachute into combat, comes under fire at Iwo Jima and is later imprisoned and tortured by Russians in Hungary. On assignment to Cuba, she meets the young mesmerizing Fidel Castro at his mountain hide-out and then again after he had turned into a murderous dictator. Many… show more.

A fictional riff on the fascinating Zelda Fitzgerald, this book delivered a solid murder mystery and gorgeously wrought scenes of New York City in the flapper era.

I’m a born-and-raised South Sider, so I adored this charming Chicago-set murder mystery. Just the right combination of sass, social observation, and cozy crime solving.