Here are 100 books that The Princess Diaries fans have personally recommended if you like
The Princess Diaries.
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I’m an Australian USA Today bestselling romance author who writes contemporary romance and uses the pen name Alyssa James to write medieval romance. I think the makeover trope resonates with me because although I’m no beauty queen now, I was definitely an ugly duckling in my teens. For reasons best known to him, my father insisted on close-cropped hair, and financial circumstances dictated out-of-style hand-me-down clothing. After university, I found my own style, but it wasn’t until I was accepted as an international flight attendant that I believed that I couldn’t be all that ugly if Qantas employed me!
This story was a funny, sexy romance and I loved the slow-burn as Ian falls for a woman, Blake, who is off-limits for a number of reasons. I also really loved the banter between the characters. Maybe it’s because I’m a speech pathologist, but I absolutely love dialogue in the books I read. I think it quickens the pace of the book and can reveal so much about the characters.
Although the plot was fairly simple, this book was so much fun, and it ticked all the boxes for me!
After a career-ending accident, former NFL recruit Ian Hunter is back on campus-and he's ready to get his new game on. As one of the masterminds behind Wingmen, Inc., a successful and secretive word-of-mouth dating service, he's putting his extensive skills with women to work for the lovelorn. But when Blake Olson requests the services of Wingmen, Inc., Ian may have landed his most hopeless client yet.
From her frumpy athletic gear to her unfortunate choice of footwear, Blake is going to need a miracle if she wants to land her…
A dead top agent, an assassinated politician, and one dangerously hot Swedish spy who knows something about her past that might end up jeopardizing her future.
What has American Division agent Katrina Foster gotten herself into this time?
Katrina knows she’s talented, but once she becomes a target, she soon…
I’m an Australian USA Today bestselling romance author who writes contemporary romance and uses the pen name Alyssa James to write medieval romance. I think the makeover trope resonates with me because although I’m no beauty queen now, I was definitely an ugly duckling in my teens. For reasons best known to him, my father insisted on close-cropped hair, and financial circumstances dictated out-of-style hand-me-down clothing. After university, I found my own style, but it wasn’t until I was accepted as an international flight attendant that I believed that I couldn’t be all that ugly if Qantas employed me!
Eloisa James has long been one of my favourite authors, and I love her witty stories in the Regency romance genre, as well as her friends-to-lovers and second-chance tropes in this story.
The hero, James, had always cared about the heroine, Theodora, who is known in London society as The Ugly Duchess. She wasn’t ugly–just “mannish” and dressed by her mother in a way that didn’t capitalize on her looks.
I liked the fact that she grew in herself and that her transition wasn’t instant. I also loved that James didn’t fall in love with her simply because of her looks but because of her capabilities and her growth in personal confidence.
'Nothing gets me to a bookstore faster than Eloisa James' - Julia Quinn
How can she dare to imagine he loves her... when all London calls her The Ugly Duchess?
Theodora Saxby is the last woman anyone expects the gorgeous James Ryburn, heir to the Duchy of Ashbrook, to marry. But after a romantic proposal before the prince himself, even practical Theo finds herself convinced of her soon-to-be duke's passion. Still, the tabloids give the marriage six months.
Theo would have given it a lifetime . . . until she discovers that James desires not her heart, and certainly not…
I’m an Australian USA Today bestselling romance author who writes contemporary romance and uses the pen name Alyssa James to write medieval romance. I think the makeover trope resonates with me because although I’m no beauty queen now, I was definitely an ugly duckling in my teens. For reasons best known to him, my father insisted on close-cropped hair, and financial circumstances dictated out-of-style hand-me-down clothing. After university, I found my own style, but it wasn’t until I was accepted as an international flight attendant that I believed that I couldn’t be all that ugly if Qantas employed me!
How many of us have dreaded attending the ten-year high school reunion? Although I’d never been called ‘Metal Mouth’ or “Queen Geek”—and as school captain, I wasn’t unpopular—I was still the girl who stood out with the longest school uniform skirt, the shortest hair, and military-grade polished school shoes courtesy of my father. No high school romances for me!
So, when former high school sports star Wiley falls head over heels with former geek and now doctor Payton, I rooted for her. However, I also empathised with Wylie, who’s trying to escape his sports-jock reputation and earn respect as a lawyer. Add great dialogue and some other great issues where healing needed to take place, and I found it an absorbing read.
Metal Mouth. Queen Geek. Dr. Payton Pruitt heard it all growing up. But she's over it, and attending her ten-year high school reunion is the perfect way to prove it to herself. Even if there's only one person she's interested in seeing in Bitterthorn, Texas: Wiley Sharpe.
Now a respected lawyer, Wiley didn't live down to the label Most Likely to Be Slapped with a Paternity Suit. But recent acts of vandalism suggest someone still sees him as a heartbreaker, and the reunion seems a likely place to find the culprit. Instead, Wiley comes face-to-face with his old pal Paytonand…
A spy school for girls amidst Jane Austen’s high society.
Daughters of the Beau Monde who don’t fit London society’s strict mold are banished to Stranje House, where the headmistress trains these unusually gifted girls to enter the dangerous world of spies in the Napoleonic wars. #1 NYT bestselling author…
I’m an Australian USA Today bestselling romance author who writes contemporary romance and uses the pen name Alyssa James to write medieval romance. I think the makeover trope resonates with me because although I’m no beauty queen now, I was definitely an ugly duckling in my teens. For reasons best known to him, my father insisted on close-cropped hair, and financial circumstances dictated out-of-style hand-me-down clothing. After university, I found my own style, but it wasn’t until I was accepted as an international flight attendant that I believed that I couldn’t be all that ugly if Qantas employed me!
The heroine in this story, Lace, has been through bullying hell as a kid–both for her overweight appearance and when a letter she wrote to Cupid about her crush on football star Pierce was made public.
Sadly, there’s so much bullying in the world today, and Lace felt very real to me. She’s sassy and smart, which is a quality that’s very important to me. She’s loyal to her friends and very devoted to her family. Her defensiveness after all she’d been through hid deep pain, and being a romance author, I want everyone to have a HEA ending!
I enjoyed reading her journey to that HEA and I loved that Pierce didn’t give up on her no matter how hard she pushed him away.
From bestselling romance author Lori Wilde comes All Out of Love, the sizzling second book in her Cupid, Texas, series, set in a town where every wish for love comes true. Millie Greenway and her friends have tried for years to keep the Cupid legend alive in their hometown, but she's not getting much help from her granddaughters. Lace Bettingfield knows the legend is bogus. As a teen, she left a letter at the Cupid statue and got nothing in return but humiliation. But now the guy she dreamed of is back in town, Lace begins to wonder if the…
Hollywood and celebrity gossip can be a fun diversion, from their fabulous clothing and closets to their ability to influence a worldwide audience. It is something I have long been drawn to and love to be immersed in. The idea of fame has always intrigued me. Is it good? Bad? Somewhere in between? Sometimes, the very pop star who the world is idolizing can be tortured behind the scenes—maybe even by fame itself. I am intrigued by the ways one goes from anonymity to notoriety, as well as the ways fame can change one’s life.
This was an enjoyable read, first and foremost, because of Meg Cabot’s witty writing style—she always makes me chuckle. I also loved this young adult novel because the main character gets to temporarily experience a vastly different life.
From Never Been Kissed, where Drew Barrymore’s twenty-something character goes undercover as a teenager, to Freaky Friday, where a mother and daughter trade places, I adore seeing characters live life in someone else’s shoes. That was a big part of why I wrote my book where Skye gets to trade in one life for another—even if it isn’t exactly by choice.
In this book, the main character, Em, gets a true peek into the life of a celebrity, and she realizes all she really wants is to be herself. This is book one in a three-part series. I haven’t read the others yet, but they look just as fun.
Two worlds collide when super-gorgeous celebutante Nikki and tomboy brainiac Em find themselves thrown together - literally. Forced to live the life of a glamorous supermodel, will Em be able to keep her old life, and those she cares about, a secret?
Airhead is the first in a brilliant, funny and thought-provoking trilogy from Meg Cabot, the author of the million-selling The Princess Diaries.
I have an unusual personal history. I majored in math in college and aspired to a life as a scientist. However, the civil rights movement and other events of the 1960s and 1970s inspired me to switch and earn a doctorate in sociology. (Which considers itself a science.) My first faculty position, at Yale beginning in 1972, involved a joint appointment in the Sociology Department and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, which focused on public policy. During the remainder of my career I have worked and published together with economists and sought to do research that uses the perspectives of both fields.
This book by sociologist Newman provides an ideal mix of statistical data with in-depth interviews with a group of low-wage workers, describing how their employment and life conditions changed over time.
We come to know these people, to understand what it is like to be employed in a low-wage job, and how it is possible but not easy for them to move up to better-paying jobs.
Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled, the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them in the low-wage labour market. In this timely volume, Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest workers and families benefited from the tight labour markets and good economic times of the late 1990s. Following black and Latino workers in Harlem, who began their work lives flipping burgers, she finds more good news than we might have expected coming out of a high-poverty neighbourhood. Many adult workers returned to school and obtained trade certificates, high school diplomas and college degrees. Their…
My print-journalist father covered the crime beat. He often took me with him to the police station and I got hooked on crime. My background is eclectic, a professional trumpet player with a BA in Mathematics and a Masters in Fine Arts. While teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston, I discovered my dark side and began writing crime thrillers. Most are inspired by actual events or news reports about stalkers, domestic homicides, or serial killers. In 2001, I moved to New Orleans. My crime thriller series features NOPD Homicide Detective Frank Renzi. I'm fortunate to be able to consult three former NOPD homicide detectives who advise me on police procedures and investigations.
Picture Jack Reacher on an NYC subway car at 2 AM with a suicide bomber. Will she blow up the car and everyone in it? I love how Lee Child keeps us in suspense, not just for a page or two, for twenty-seven pages! Reacher finds out the woman had a dangerous secret, but everyone he talks to lies to him. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger and more questions.
But many people want Reacher to stop asking questions: a former Delta Force operative running for the US Senate, two Al Qaeda agents, NYC cops, and FBI agents. They want Reacher to get lost and forget the suicide bomber. Fat chance! The complex plot will intrigue you. The climactic ending will terrify you even more than the suicide bomber.
Enhances his status as a mythic avenger. . .You'll be left with a thumping heart and a racing pulse but, be warned, Chapter 63 will give you nightmares." (Evening Standard)
Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs.There are twelve things to look for.No one who has worked in law enforcement will ever forget them.
New York City.The subway, two o'clock in the morning. Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers.Four are OK.The fifth isn't. The train brakes for Grand Central Station.
Will Reacher intervene, and save lives? Or is he wrong?Will his intervention cost…
I’m not as old as some of the characters in the books I’ve mentioned, but I’m getting there. With age, one learns to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other. The importance of friendship and community can hardly be overstated. I love reading books that represent older characters, especially women, as complex, life-embracing individuals without resorting to condescension. I strove to write such a book with Toby’s Last Resort. I’m not always writing about older characters, but in all my work, I want to dive below the surface, discover meaning in the ordinary, and treat my characters with respect.
Lillian is an 84-years old woman walking around New York City on New Year’s Eve.
She loves the city, made her way there as a young woman in advertising in the 30s, became well-known as a poet of light verse. She alternately reminisces about her life and encounters people you would not expect.
She remembers her life in pieces, the way one does, so the reader puts together the mystery.
I found her to be a delightful and refreshing character. The book is a beautiful lacing of the past with the promise of unexpected things to come.
A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop.
“In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,” Lillian Boxfish writes, “I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street…”
She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid…
Most of my public success has been as a novelist. My MFA, from the Iowa Writers Workshop, is in poetry. When I grow up, I want to be a short story writer. The dirty truth is, though, I’ve been making trouble with stories since I was a kid. During my first attempt in 10th grade, I wrote a story that got me suspended for two weeks. No explanation. No guidance. Just a conference between my parents, teachers, and principal (I wasn’t present), and they came out and banished me. I dropped out of school shortly after. I reckon that experience, both shameful and delicious, shaped my life and love of narrative.
The complexities of the human, the whole human. That’s what Paley explores. How we think, how we act and feel, how we play and fight, how we talk. And talk. Paley is a master of nuance, and often reveals her mastery through dialogue. There is always a convincing urgency in the way her characters speak, and a delicious talking-around a thing, an idea. Her worlds richly detailed and urban. I’d like to live in the apartment building of Grace Paley’s mind.
This reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection—a finalist for the National Book Award—demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again.
Whether writing about the love (and conflict) between parents and children or between husband and wife, or about the struggles of aging single mothers or disheartened political organizers to make sense of the world, she brings the same unerring ear for the rhythm of life as it is actually lived.
The Collected Stories is a 1994 National Book Award Finalist…
Growing up in Brooklyn I heard stories about local mafia figures. Now, as the author of several books that deal with crime, I am passionate about good storytelling. I believe that a novel delving into the world of crime and criminals should be fast-paced and believable. Readers have told me that they give up on a book because, in their words: 1. “It isn’t believable” and 2. “It didn’t draw me in.” God forbid that any of the books I’ve written should fall into either of those categories! The books that I recommend are tops in the genre of The Best Mob Books That Tell It Like It Is.
This is a novel about Italian immigrants struggling to survive in New York City’s Little Italy during the early years of the twentieth century amid the growth of the Black Hand, the precursor to the American mafia. The book is unique in that most of the characters are the author’s actual ancestors and people with whom they had come into contact during that era. Similarly, the grisly central events described in the story all occurred.
It is beautifully written and filled with fascinating historical details. The characters and the descriptions of places and events come alive on the page. Fabiano includes an extensive Glossary of Italian Terms used in the book, as well as a multi-generational family tree. Elizabeth Street makes for very good reading!
Based on true events, Elizabeth Street is a multigenerational saga that opens in an Italian village in the 1900's, and crosses the ocean to New York's Lower East Side. At the heart of the novel is Giovanna, whose family is targeted by the notorious Black Hand-the precursor to the Mafia. Elizabeth Street brings to light a period in history when Italian immigrant neighborhoods lived in fear of Black Hand extortion and violence-a reality that defies the romanticized depiction of the Mafia. Here, the author reveals the merciless terror of the Black Hand-and the impact their crimes had on her family.…
