Maybe because I was raised by strong, independent women. Maybe because I went to an all-women’s college for a bit. Or maybe because I worked with so many powerful women in advertising. All those things combined to create my interest in fearless females in fiction. Women with natural ambition and power needs have many more obstacles put in their way than men do. For me, the character of Angela, the “angel” in Angel of Ambition, emerged naturally. She is part and parcel of the best and worst traits of the fearless females I’ve known in life and the fearless females in fiction that I’ve sometimes loathed and, in the end, always loved.
Determined to escape the poverty and hopelessness of “the projects” of lower Manhattan, Angela Hanson sets out to learn the secrets of the glittering world of success.
Armed only with her intelligence, nerve, and beauty, she masters the ice-cold arts of doing whatever it takes. Sweetly seductive and innocently bloodthirsty, Angela slashes and charms her way through the corporate jungle and makes a desperate dash for safety in the kingdom of billionaires.
A fast-paced story with complex, contemporary characters, Angel of Ambition is a glamorous, female-driven thriller. Think Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp meets HBO’s Succession.
The character of Amy Dunne shatters every imaginable norm of acceptable, expected female behavior. She left “nice” long, long ago. In spite of (and in part because of) her upbringing of privilege and protection, she has a lifetime’s worth of suppressed bitterness, disappointment, and rage. Even the author admitted in interviews that Amy’s craziness is way over the top. But that’s why Amy is so fascinating. Whatever will she do next? She explodes her way into the front row of the male-dominated Pantheon of dark-hearted anti-heroes.
THE ADDICTIVE No.1 BESTSELLER AND INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON OVER 20 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE THE BOOK THAT DEFINES PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
Who are you? What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on…
Lisbeth Salander. What makes her so good? Still wrestling demons and overcoming unspeakable horrors, Lisbeth blasts ahead, fearlessly righting wrongs and fighting the evil in the world. A weird outsider, she is at heart a good woman who is the ultimate badass. The ultimate badass. Say no more. Just read her stories and watch her movies.
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly-knit but dysfunctional family.
He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history.
Mildred starts out trying to fulfill all the traditional roles society expects of women as a wife and mother. But she discovers, through travails, that she is too smart, too talented, and too natively ambitious to settle for those limitations. As Mildred gains success in the “man’s world,” she becomes the provider for everyone around her. She learns the bitterest lessons imaginable as her men and her daughter, first use her, then betray her. Against her will, Mildred Pierce becomes a fearless female in a cold cruel world. She triumphs in the end as a woman of courage, relying not on the unreliable love of others, but on her own independent spirit.
In Mildred Pierce, noir master James M. Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devasting emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men, and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter.
Over a century before there were the Kardashian women and the Real Housewives, Edith Wharton created the character of Undine Spragg. Undine is the gold medal Olympic champion of social climbing—she needs to be seen and admired, to be at the cutting edge of fashion, and to be indisputably on top. She will sacrifice anything to satisfy her hunger for status—marriages, children, and love. She fears nothing and no one. In the character Undine, Wharton held a mirror up to the superficial values of the Gilded Age. If Undine Spragg were created today, she would show the Kardashians and the Housewives how a truly fearless Selfie Queen stops at nothing to climb the ladder of social status and success.
Edith Wharton’s classic story of one woman’s quest for wealth and status after the turn of the twentieth century
Beautiful, selfish, and driven, Undine Spragg arrives in New York with all of the ambition and naiveté that her midwestern, nouveau riche upbringing afforded her. As cunning as she is lovely, Undine has but one goal in life: to ascend to the upper echelons of high society. And so with a single-minded tenacity, Undine continues to maneuver through life, finding all the while that true satisfaction remains just beyond her grasp.
Hailed by Elizabeth Hardwick as “Edith Wharton’s finest achievement,” The…
Blazing her way through British society of the early 19th century in Thackeray’s rambling serialized novel, Becky Sharp is the spiritual “mother” of all the fearless females in fiction who follow her. Brilliant, charming, ruthless, utterly without principles, and totally amoral, Becky sees the emptiness of polite British society for the sham that it is. And she acts accordingly to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. Both in fiction and in real life, Becky Sharp is an enduring model for women of relentless ambition.
William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair depicts the anarchic anti-heroine Beky Sharpe cutting a swathe through the eligible young men of Europe, set against a lucid backdrop of war and international chaos. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Carey.
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia Sedley, however, longs only for the caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour…
My book recommendations reflect an abiding passion for Japanese literature, which has unquestionably influenced my own writing. My latest literary interest involves Japanese poetry—I’ve recently started a project that combines haiku and prose narration to describe my experiences as a part-time resident in a 1300-year-old Japanese hot spring town that Bashō helped make famous in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. But as a writer, my main focus remains novels. In late 2023 the second in a planned series of novels set in Ishikawa prefecture will be published. I currently live in Kanazawa, but have also been lucky to call Sapporo, Akita, Tokyo, and Fukui home at different times.
Emmitt’s plans collapse when his wife, Mirai, suddenly backs out of purchasing their dream home. Disappointed, he’s surprised to discover her subtle pursuit of a life and career in Tokyo.
In his search for a meaningful life in Japan, and after quitting his job, he finds himself helping his mother-in-law translate Kanazawa’s most famous author, Izumi Kyoka, into English. He becomes drawn into the mysterious death of a friend of Mirai’s parents, leading him and his father-in-law to climb the mountain where the man died. There, he learns the somber truth and discovers what the future holds for him and his wife.
Packed with subtle literary allusion and closely observed nuance, Kanazawa reflects the mood of Japanese fiction in a fresh, modern incarnation.
In Kanazawa, the first literary novel in English to be set in this storied Japanese city, Emmitt's future plans collapse when his wife, Mirai, suddenly backs out of negotiations to purchase their dream home. Disappointed, he's surprised to discover Mirai's subtle pursuit of a life and career in Tokyo, a city he dislikes.
Harmony is further disrupted when Emmitt's search for a more meaningful life in Japan leads him to quit an unsatisfying job at a local university. In the fallout, he finds himself helping his mother-in-law translate Kanazawa's most famous author, Izumi Kyoka, into English.
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