Here are 75 books that The Pursuit of Love fans have personally recommended if you like
The Pursuit of Love.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child, and my favorite protagonists are readers and writers. The Kansas tallgrass prairie horizons where I grew up fueled my imagination, and I wanted to write like the girls in my novels. I discovered Anne of Green Gables as a teen, and since then, I’ve researched, published, and presented on the book as a quixotic novel. As a creative writer, my own characters are often readers, writers, librarians, book club members, and anyone who loves a good tale. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I do each time I return to them.
This book has so many different elements—humor, the struggles of poverty, Cassandra’s dreams of success as a writer, quirky family members, and a tumbledown castle where the Mortmain family lives.
I identified with Cassandra’s efforts to keep a journal to hone her writing skills, having done so myself as a teen. I also enjoyed the unconventional take on a castle and Cassandra’s honesty in depicting (or “capturing”) it and its inhabitants with her words.
The dilapidated castle and the family’s foibles make this story approachable and enjoyable. It is one that invites the reader into the castle and the story as a welcome guest.
A wonderfully quirky coming-of-age story, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians is an affectionately drawn portrait of one of the funniest families in literature.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Ruth Steed, and features an afterword by publisher Anna South.
The eccentric Mortmain family have been rattling around in a…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I grew up in a small seaside town north of Boston. I have three siblings, and we always spent a few weeks every summer with our cousins in a rented house somewhere in New England—a new place each year. I became a bookworm at a young age, and I’ve always loved reading novels about big families that capture both the magic and the conflicts inevitable with many siblings and relatives. I was also an anglophile, and I tended to gravitate toward books written in earlier decades, particularly those of the mid 20th century. When I began writing my own novels, it seemed natural to set them in those fascinating earlier times.
This novel, published in 1949, is about three grown-up siblings who are still dominated by the memory of their famous parents, both accomplished performers, and their atypical early years, which they spent playing in theaters across Europe. Though the majority of the novel takes place after the parents have died, the ties of family remain paramount for the three protagonists. At times each one feels desperate to escape those ties, but their shared past exerts an irresistible pull on all three. Unusually, the novel is narrated in the first-person plural: the narrative often refers to “us,” but tells each sibling’s individual scenes in the third person. With its three intertwined threads, The Parasites vividly explores the lifelong influence of family bonds.
'When people play the game: Name three or four persons whom you would choose to have with you on a desert island - they never choose the Delaneys. They don't even choose us one by one as individuals. We have earned, not always fairly we consider, the reputation of being difficult guests . . .'
Maria, Niall and Celia have grown up in the shadow of their famous parents - their father, a flamboyant singer and their mother, a talented dancer. Now pursuing their own creative dreams, all three siblings feel an undeniable bond,…
I grew up in a small seaside town north of Boston. I have three siblings, and we always spent a few weeks every summer with our cousins in a rented house somewhere in New England—a new place each year. I became a bookworm at a young age, and I’ve always loved reading novels about big families that capture both the magic and the conflicts inevitable with many siblings and relatives. I was also an anglophile, and I tended to gravitate toward books written in earlier decades, particularly those of the mid 20th century. When I began writing my own novels, it seemed natural to set them in those fascinating earlier times.
The true identity of Diana Tutton remains uncertain. She published three idiosyncratic novels in England in the 1950s, all of which have now fallen into obscurity. Of those, Guard Your Daughters is the best: it describes a loving family dedicated to protecting the children’s mother, whose poor health has led to an insular, overly sheltered lifestyle for her many daughters. Each of the girls is distinct and vividly drawn by Tutton, who has a keen eye for the traditions, tensions, and excitement of siblings in their teenage years. Over the course of the novel, the sisters gradually forge more connections with the outside world and discover not only their own larger desires but also the hidden truth of their family life.
Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton is a 1953 novel about a family of five daughters living in the country – or rather four daughters since one has recently escaped by marrying and it is Morgan, Cressida, Teresa and Thisbe who are still at home with their parents. Their mother stops her daughters going to school or making friends. But because she tends to make scenes or retire to bed, her family do all they can to avoid defying or upsetting her; yet they do so in a continually light-hearted, cheerful fashion.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I grew up in a small seaside town north of Boston. I have three siblings, and we always spent a few weeks every summer with our cousins in a rented house somewhere in New England—a new place each year. I became a bookworm at a young age, and I’ve always loved reading novels about big families that capture both the magic and the conflicts inevitable with many siblings and relatives. I was also an anglophile, and I tended to gravitate toward books written in earlier decades, particularly those of the mid 20th century. When I began writing my own novels, it seemed natural to set them in those fascinating earlier times.
Toward the end of her career, Rebecca West wrote an unusually autobiographical novel, retelling her Edwardian childhood with the wisdom and sadness of hindsight. The Fountain Overflows, published in 1956, describes the struggles of an artistic family with a fiercely devoted mother and an impossibly wayward father. West brilliantly describes the hard work and ambitions of gifted children, but the book is mainly memorable for its strange, semi-magical atmosphere and the sense it gives readers of revisiting a lost world—for hanging over this book is the shadow of the First World War, a cataclysm that finally arrives in the sequel, This Dark Night.
The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father's genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up…
I’m a writer, journalist, satirist, and novelist. I’ve written humor and satire for McSweeney’s, The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, The Belladonna, and other publications, often about subjects that make me angry, sad, or both. Sometimes I write as a way to process, to vent, and to make fun of myself. I wrote a humor piece called "Turn Your Princess Toddler Into a Feminist in 8 Easy Steps." The New York Times published it, and it went viral. There was so much interest in the piece it prompted me to start researching the topic of princess obsessed girls. That research became my nonfiction book – The Feminist’s Guide to Raising a Little Princess.
This is a masterclass in satirical writing but also just in novel writing. Coe manages to combine a gripping narrative and murder mystery with a scathing indictment of Great Britain in the 80s, when venal wealth was king and the country lost its soul. This was one of those books where I felt like I learned so much, about British culture, politics, corruption, and a 1961 comedy horror movie that shares its name with the book title, but I didn’t notice it because I was having such a good time. There are so many layers to the plot – and inventive dimensions to the way the story is told - and it’s one of my favorite books of all time.
'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' - Guardian Telling the stories of the wealthy Winshaw family, WHAT A CARVE UP! is a riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes.
I'm the multiple, award-winning author of 4 novels and one novella, raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and now living in Southern California. The geographical distance gives me a laser-sharp, appreciative perspective of the South, and I celebrate the literary greats from the region. The South is known as the last romantic place in America, and I believe this to be true. The South’s culture, history, and social mores are part and parcel to its fascinating characters, and nothing is more important in the South than the telling of a good story. As a writer, I'm in love with language. I love Southern turns of phrase and applaud those writers who capture Southern nuance. It is well worth writing about Southern sensibilities.
Peachtree Road is considered a modern-day Gone with The Wind, in that it is set in the pivotal, changing times of 1960’s Atlanta, and concerns the opulent area of Buckhead, where the privileged who built modern-day Atlanta live. The story is narrated in lyrical language by Shep Bondurant, an insightful young man born to privilege, who tells the coming-of-age story of Southern traditions and hypocrisy, and the impact of growing up alongside his troubled cousin, Lucy. A deeply probing story on multiple levels concerning society and the impact of family.
“A blockbuster of a novel. . . . Peachtree Road is the meaty and absorbing story of a city turned on to power and of the privileged inhabitants who led it to its current station as a mecca of business, culture, and progress. . . . To say this book is potent does not come close to doing it justice. More than merely powerful, it is mesmerizing, enthralling, and totally unforgettable.” — Chattanooga Free Press
A masterful tale of love, hate, and rebellion set in an elite world of class and wealth, New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons's…
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
Dinosaurs have been my passion in life since before I could even form complete sentences. For as far back as I can remember, I have been enthralled by these magnificent creatures and have been obsessed with their ability to ensnare the human imagination in a way few other topics can. As a child, I would go to the school library and read dinosaur books every day after school. I would also spend my summers planning trips to museums to see their bones for myself. The amount of dinosaur movies, books, video games, and television shows I have consumed cannot be understated.
A commonly discussed debate among dinosaur fans is whether or not Jurassic Park was influenced in any way by this book. Not only did the Carnosaur novel predate Jurassic Park but the film adaptations of both were released only weeks apart in 1993.
Regardless, this book did many of the same things in Jurassic Park several years before Jurassic Park’s release. The novel also features an eccentric billionaire cloning dinosaurs, but what I believe truly separates both stories is the fact that while Jurassic Park is set on a remote island, Carnosaur follows a sleepy little town where the primal creatures escape to and wreak havoc.
What follows is a gruesome series of attacks and mauling that send shivers down my spine each time I revisit this story. While this book is not as highly regarded as Jurassic Park, I believe it deserves to be remembered as a piece…
Nothing much ever happens in the sleepy English town of Warchester. So when a farmer is found savagely killed in some sort of animal attack, it’s a big story for local reporter David Pascal. The rich and eccentric Sir Darren Penward tells the police an escaped Siberian tiger from his private zoo is to blame, but Pascal isn’t so sure. Especially when one witness describes something impossible: an enormous and deadly creature that has been extinct for sixty million years. What exactly is Penward hiding behind the walls of his massive estate? And can Pascal uncover the truth before Penward’s…
I’ve been teaching “Writing Humor and Comedy” at Drexel University (where I’m an English professor) twice a year forever, and I’m proud (and still a little awed) that at least one of my students has gone on to have a successful humor-writing career. My very first publication was a satirical story back in 1996, and in more recent years, my humor has been published in The Oxford University Press Humor Reader, McSweeney’s, and Points in Case. Writing funny fiction is my main focus as a novelist, and my sequel, The Great American Betrayal, was named one of "The Best Comedy Books of 2022" by New York magazine's Vulture.com.
The Code of the Woostersmight be the best funny novel of them all. The all-knowing valet Jeeves and the hilarious narrator Bertram Wooster helped inspire the relationship in my novels between the coffeebot narrator Arjay and private investigator Frank Harken. Wodehouse’s plotting is superb and beyond clever, but it’s the prose—the playful and inventive sentences and paragraphs—that makes me come back to read this book again and again. A sample sentence: “He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject.”
Follow the adventures of Bertie Wooster and his gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves, in this stunning new edition of one of the greatest comic novels in the English language. When Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie Wooster help her dupe an antique dealer into selling her an 18th-century cow-creamer. Dahlia trumps Bertie's objections by threatening to sever his standing invitation to her house for lunch, an unthinkable prospect given Bertie's devotion to the cooking of her chef, Anatole. A web of complications grows as Bertie's pal Gussie Fink-Nottle asks for counseling in the matter of his impending marriage to Madeline Bassett. It seems…
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
Heather Richardson is one of our best historians. I love her brilliance, and I love that she knows the material well enough to explain it simply to the novice.
I read her previous book, and this next one didn't disappoint. If I could only read one book on how the USA has come to this, Democracy Awakening would be it. I recommend it for anyone who would finally like to try democracy in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes!
In Democracy Awakening, American historian Heather Cox Richardson examines how, over the decades, an elite minority have made war on American ideals. By weaponising language and promoting false history, they are leading Americans into authoritarianism and creating a disaffected population.
Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. In Democracy Awakening, Richardson wrangles America's meandering and confusing news feed into a coherent story to explain how America got to this perilous point, what we should pay attention to, and what the future of democracy holds.
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
Within the caste into which I was born, daughter of a daughter of a daughter, I was ‘nobody’—no dowry, an awkward brain, and unfashionable looks—dark hourglass, not blonde beanpole. Unless I married the right kind of man, of course–an eldest son with a big house. This was the 70s, and you probably don’t believe me, but many girls still went the full Jane Austen. So I’m perfectly qualified to tell you about the best books that centre on a big house as metaphor, a major character or a massive plot point in a novel. And, reader, I swerved marrying a man for his house too.
If you think Georgette Heyer is all sprigged muslin, firm-jawed heroes, forthright heroines, and cod-Austen visits to Bath, think again. This is a bizarre novel, indeed.
It’s not even one of her "mysteries" like Footsteps in the Dark—fairly straightforward murder stories where something has to be solved. Instead, Penhallow is a house, a seething breeding ground for horrible people intent on doing awful things to each other.
Each character is drawn in frighteningly frank detail, so you are left in no doubt of their weaknesses and peccadillos. Penhallow is like some kind of disgusting nest, and the manipulative patriarch Adam Penhallow, disabled in some unspecified way, has dragged all the best antiques into the huge drawing room where he infests a vast Tudor bed and holds court every night.
Nearly everyone hates him but can’t break away. He likes to keep his family, illegitimate and otherwise, under his…
A family tyrant whose murder has shocking and far-reaching consequences…
Hated for his cruel and vicious nature, yet ruling his family with an iron hand from his sickbed, tyrannical patriarch Adam Penhallow is found murdered the day before his birthday. His entire family had assembled for his birthday celebration, and every one of them had the ways and means to commit the crime. As accusation and suspicion turn in one direction, then another, the claws and backstabbing come out, and no one is exempt from the coming implosion.
"Miss Heyer's characters act and speak with an ease and conviction that…
