Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Messenger of Truth: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (Maisie Dobbs Novels)

Messenger of Truth: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (Maisie Dobbs Novels)

by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs investigates the mysterious death of a controversial artist—and World War I veteran—in the fourth entry in the bestselling series London, 1931. The night before an exhibition of his artwork opens at a famed Mayfair gallery, the controversial artist Nick Bassington-Hope falls to his death. The police rule it an accident, but Nick’s twin sister, Georgina, a wartime journalist and a infamous figure in... (more)

The Odd Woman: A Novel

by Gail Godwin

"HER BEST BOOK SO FAR....<It is> one of the most literate, intelligent and powerful novels I have ever read." --Eugenia Thornton The Cleveland Plain Dealer Professor Jane Clifford is in her early thirties, smart, and attractive. A popular teacher at a midwestern college, she appears to be going somewhere. But Jane knows better. After a lifetime habit of looking to books for the answers to life's mysteries,... (more)

Rise and Shine: A Novel

by Anna Quindlen

From Anna Quindlen, acclaimed author of Blessings, Black and Blue, and One True Thing , a superb novel about two sisters, the true meaning of success, and the qualities in life that matter most. It’s an otherwise ordinary Monday when Meghan Fitzmaurice’s perfect life hits a wall. A household name as the host of Rise and Shine , the country’s highest-rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial... (more)

Pavilion of Women

by Pearl S. Buck

From the author of The Good Earth comes the story of Madame Wu, a woman whose surprising decision to retire from married life and select a concubine for her husband upsets her extended household. "A searching, adult study of women written with high seriousness and sympathy." - The New York Times Book Review

The Hiding Place

A Novel

by Trezza Azzopardi

This exceptional novel about family, love, and the innocence and terror of childhood was one of the most applauded and auspicious debuts of the last year. Compared by reviewers to Angela's Ashes and Wuthering Heights, The Hiding Place was the only debut work to be shortlisted for England's prestigious Booker Prize -- in the company of Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood -- and went on to become a universally... (more)

O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." . . . "The land belongs to the future . . . that's the way it seems to me. . . . I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while." -- Willa Cather, O Pioneers! Willa Cather... (more)

Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

In South Africa, where Blacks and whites are caught in the winds of change, a young woman tries to uphold the radical heritage she received from her martyred parents while carving out a sense of self.

The Welsh Girl

by Peter Ho Davies

From the acclaimed writer Peter Ho Davies comes an engrossing wartime love story set in the stunning landscape of North Wales during the final, harrowing months of World War II. Young Esther Evans has lived her whole life within the confines of her remote mountain village. The daughter of a fiercely nationalistic sheep farmer, Esther yearns for a taste of the wider world that reaches her only through broadcasts... (more)

The Widow's War: A Novel

by Sally Gunning

Married for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler's wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—running their house herself during her husband's long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed. She is overwhelmed by grief, and her property and rights... (more)

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales

New edition (revised and expanded) available 8/13/02. Fairy tales are one of the most enduring forms of literature, their plots retold and characters reimagined for centuries. In this elegant and thought-provoking collection of original essays, Kate Bernheimer brings together twenty-eight leading women writers to discuss how these stories helped shape their imaginations, their craft, and our culture. In poetic... (more)

What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel

by Irina Reyn

A mesmerizing debut novel that reimagines Tolstoy's classic tragedy, Anna Karenina, for our time Vivacious thirty-seven-year-old Anna K. is comfortably married to Alex, an older, prominent businessman from her tight-knit Russian-Jewish immigrant community in Queens. But a longing for freedom is reignited in this bookish, overly romantic, and imperious woman when she meets her cousin Katia Zavurov's boyfriend,... (more)

Consider the Lily

by Elizabeth Buchan

Winner of the 1994 Romantic Novelist's Association Novel of the Year Award, this is a passionate story played out between three people. It is also a poignant novel of England between the wars.

The World Before Her

by Deborah Weisgall

A stunning novel about two women and two marriages -- George Eliot at the end of her life, and another woman a century later. The year is 1880 and the setting is Venice. Marian Evans -- whose novels under the pen name George Eliot have placed her among the famed Englishwomen of her time -- has come to this enchanted city on her honeymoon. Newly married to John Cross, twenty years her junior, she hopes to put her... (more)

Elegance

by Kathleen Tessaro

by Candace Bushnell

Medea

by Euripides

To make Medea more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone EditionTM includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. In doing this, it is our intention that the reader may more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama. ... (more)

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

The Open Door

by Elizabeth Maguire

“The story is the journey, not the destination. Or so the philosopher’s say. But this is my story, and it has a beginning, a middle, and an end….” The Open Door is a luminous and profoundly moving novel inspired by the life of Constance Fenimore Woolson, one of the most widely-read and respected American authors of the nineteenth century. Exploring themes of passion, life, death, friendship, and art, the novel is... (more)

The Reeve's Tale (Sister Frevisse)

by Margaret Frazer

As illness and murder cast a cloud over Prior Byfield, fear and suspicion reign-and Frevisse's keen deductions lead her closer to the disturbing truth.

The Maiden's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries (Paperback))

The Maiden's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries (Paperback))

by Margaret Frazer

A visit at the home of Sister Frevisse's cousin Lady Alice becomes dangerous--for this home houses a secret that has turned deadly. Alice is involved in dangerous political machinations with the duc of Orleans and King Henry VI. Private correspondence has been routed through the Suffolks' home, but now the messenger has been brutally slain. Can Sister Frevisse find the traitor and murderer before he strikes... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: women in fiction-main characters

by Jacqueline Winspear

by Gail Godwin

by Anna Quindlen

by Pearl S. Buck

A Novel

by Trezza Azzopardi

by Willa Cather

by Nadine Gordimer

by Peter Ho Davies

by Sally Gunning

by Irina Reyn

by Elizabeth Buchan

by Deborah Weisgall

by Kathleen Tessaro

by Candace Bushnell

by Euripides

by Arthur Miller

by Elizabeth Maguire

by Margaret Frazer

by Margaret Frazer