“In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut.” TwoWarFeelingsWantedNovelWonderfulJourneyProudShadowProfoundMotherhoodContraryContemporaryPostsCaliforniaShakesJapanCheerStubbornIrresistibleHousewifeBack AgainHeroinesIntricateDebutPost War Author:Margot Livesey
“In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.” GivingYearsFactsStoriesLightFacesHumanityOrderStrongDarkFictionNovelViolenceWrittenBloodCrimeColdTerribleOffersQuietBraveBrilliantCaptureKillersHeroinesSerialsLight UpAftermathFusionSerial KillerDark PlacesDellBrave WomenFact And Fiction Author:Stephen King
“Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.” IfsFirstsKindBookStatesStoriesLosesUnitedUnited StatesNovelFourHeroOvercomingMurderVolumePublishersHeroinesSpiritualism Book:Mencken Chrestomathy Source: Mencken Chrestomathy
“Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.” WayMindForceSinNovelReaderConsequenceFairsWeakHeroinesSeducingWeak Minds Author:Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
“I wanted to avoid what some modern tellers have done, quite legitimately, to make fairy tales more like novels and short stories, to characterize the heroes and the heroines much more than they are characterized in Grimm. I like the psychological flatness of them, the fact that they're more like masks than individuals.” DoneFactsStoriesWantedIndividualNovelModernHeroTalesPsychologicalFairyMaskShort StoryFairy TaleHeroinesGrimmFlatness Author:Philip Pullman