Fiction Reader's Guides for titles published by Houghton Mifflin Company

Fiction Reader's Guides

A complete listing of our fiction Reader's Guides appears below, organized alphabetically by author. Please continue to check back, because new guides are being added all the time. Don't miss our nonfiction Reader's Guides and featured guides with something for everyone.

Take a look at our new Writer's Resource Catalog.

Sign up for e-mail updates on new reading group guides and resources

	Red Poppies by Alai "Conjures up a faraway world . . . panoramic and intimate at the same time." — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
	Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw "Anshaw writes with biting humor and a touching reverence for the power of loss." — Boston Globe
	Lucky in the Corner by Carol Anshaw "Irresistible and inventive . . . Anshaw is wonderfully perceptive." — Newsday
	Seven Moves by Carol Anshaw "A tightly told tale that resists the bookmark as well as any thriller." — Chicago Sun-Times
	Knitting by Anne Bartlett "A moving story about true love and haunting grief." — Adriana Trigiani
	Almost by Elizabeth Benedict A paperback bestseller "The most engrossing novel I've come across in a long time." — Jeff Giles, Newsweek
	The Practice of Deceit by Elizabeth Benedict "Wickedly funny . . . at times heartbreaking, always smart and entertaining." — Hallie Ephron, Boston Globe
	Save Your Own by Elisabeth Brink "Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg is a romantic heroine unlike any other...Save Your Own is a keeper." USA Today
	Long for This World by Michael Byers "This story will move you to tears and make you laugh out loud . . . Michael Byers is a master." — Elizabeth Berg
	Secret Father by James Carroll "A gripping tale . . . The psychological undercurrents are as charged as the Cold War drama." — People
	My Ántonia by Willa Cather "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia." — H. L. Mencken
	Saints of Big Harbour by Lynn Coady "A likable teen and his battles are sensitively evoked in Coady's wise tale." — People
	Mademoiselle Benoir by Christine Conrad "An exuberant plunge into rural French life . . . A thoroughly satisfying and thoughtful story of love triumphant." — Booklist
	River Thieves by Michael Crummey "A remarkable achievement — part adventure tale, part meditation on place and history, wholly engaging . . . This is powerful writing." — Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain
	Faith: Stories by C. Michael Curtis (Editor) Short fiction on the varieties and vagaries of faith from a diverse gathering of writers.
	God: Stories by C. Michael Curtis (Editor) "A literary catechism, a true religious education, a fiction lover's book of common prayer." — James Carroll
	The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies “An ambitious, layered meditation on what it means to be from a particular place . . . Ideas do more than gird the novel’s absorbing world; they animate it. Davies’s achievement is significant.” —Jennifer Egan, New York Times Book Review
	The Walking Tour by Kathryn Davis "Mysteries, bees, abandonment, jealousy . . . are all bound up in this hypnotic novel." — Chicago Tribune
	Girlwood by Claire Dean A fairytale and environmental fantasy, this novel is about faith, magic, and the resilience of girls.
	A Seahorse Year by Stacey D'Erasmo "Psychologically complex and lyrical . . . we gain access into a strikingly contemporary family whose cohesiveness is tested by unexpected adversity." — San Francisco Chronicle
	Fasting, Feasting and Diamond Dust by Anita Desai "Desai is a superb observer of the human race." — New York Times Book Review
	The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai "A beautifully rendered combination of history, folklore, and modern fiction." — Entertainment Weekly, Editor’s Choice
	Pravda: A Novel by Edward Docx Inspired by the author’s own family history, Pravda is a haunting chronicle of suspicion and loss, love and loyalty, and the destructive legacy of deceit.
	The Calligrapher by Edward Docx "Undeniably winning . . . a racy and stylish tale of comeupance." — Los Angeles Times
	The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald "A marvelously piercing fiction." — Times Literary Supplement
	The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald "A magical little book." — Doris Lessing
	The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald "Vibrant with wonderful characters, ablaze with ideas." — Washington Post
	Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald "A marvelous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous, and graceful." — Sunday Times
	Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer "This book is, as its name implies, brilliant." — Adrienne Miller, Esquire
	Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer "Is there a novel that, in a fit of envy, Holden Caulfield, Huck Finn, Harriet the Spy, and Krazy Kat — all of the above — might long to enter? And would feel at home in? Yes! Jonathan Safran Foer's funny, tender, tragic, ingeniously imaginative Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." — Cynthia Ozick
	Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr "Freymann-Weyr's prose always has an incandescent intensity. Impossible...to put down." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
	The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss "Spare and beautifully written, with a matter-of-fact sense of hardship which I loved." — Richard Wiley
	Wild Life by Molly Gloss "Molly Gloss's unconventional heroine . . . reminds us that opportunity exists inside the self as well as outside it." — New York Times Book Review
	Featherstone by Kirsty Gunn "Entrancing . . . Gunn observes closely and knits the reader in." — New York Times Book Review
	LaTour Dreams of the Wolf Girl by David Huddle "Finely crafted . . . a story of relationships, intimacy, sex, storytelling, art, lies, and betrayal." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
	The Hallelujah Side by Rhoda Huffey "A comic triumph . . . has the sensual, rollicking feel of a gospel song." — Newsday
	Last Year's River by Allen Morris Jones "The unconventional love story at the heart of this first novel is touching and unpredictable." — Library Journal
	An Unfinished Season by Ward Just "This is vintage Just: elegant writing that captures the wounded spirit of the times and the ache in [a] young heart." — Newsweek
	Tolstoy Lied by Rachel Kadish "Cuts to the very core of what a love story should be: not about how we find happiness, but about what it means to do so." — The San Francisco Chronicle
	Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri "Filled with quiet astonishments." — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
	The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri "This poignant treatment of the immigrant experience is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details." — Library Journal
	Sugar Island by Ivonne Lamazares "At once a deeply personal and worldly tale . . . a wonderful amalgamation of culture, politics and love." — Philadelphia Weekly
	My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman "Every page offers laugh-out-loud dialogue . . . it's a novel so entertaining you're sorry to see it end." — Seattle Times
	Homestead by Rosina Lippi "Moves us to tears and makes us grateful for it." — Dorothy Allison
	Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal "Even while capturing the great sweep of the period, Charity Girl celebrates most the depth of the characters’ lives."— — Matthew Pearl
	The Wasp Eater by William Lychack "Deeply moving . . . a perfect window into a boy’s troubled heart." — USA Today
	The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers "McCullers leaves her characters hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory." — The Nation An enduring classic beloved by generations of readers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable story of moral isolation in a small Georgia mill town in the 1930s.
	The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers "McCullers's best. An unusual story of a very sensitive child . . . [that] holds you by the very brilliance of its writing." — Atlanta Journal-Constitution
	The Far Field by Edie Meidav "[Meidav's] sprawling debut novel . . . has been justly compared to the fiction of Ondaatje and Kingsolver." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
	Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min "Brilliant. We will never imagine Madame Mao the same way again." — Russell Banks
	Wild Ginger by Anchee Min "Potent . . . the image she creates of a world marching in lock-step is chilling." — Los Angeles Times
	Empress Orchid by Anchee Min "A heart-grabbing novel of an ingenious woman who would be queen . . . Compelling to the end." — O, the Oprah Magazine
	Taps by Willie Morris "[A] vivid and moving picture of what it was like to be sixteen in the Delta in the 1950s." — Memphis Commercial Appeal
	Kit's Law by Donna Morrissey "Donna Morrissey has created . . . an extraordinary trinity of women." — Thomas Keneally
	In the Forest by Edna O'Brien "This literary thriller reads like a dark enchantment, an unholy myth, a terrifyingly true fairy tale." — Elle
	The Light of Evening by Edna O'Brien "Each page is so seductive, so dazzling, you won’t want to leave it." — Frank McCourt
	Wild Decembers by Edna O'Brien "Irish to the quick, violent and sad and, in a strange way, beautiful." — Washington Post
	Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick "A cause for celebration in the world of literature. Here we have a heroine to love, a story we can't let go of." — Ann Patchett
	All-Bright Court and Imani All Mine by Connie Porter "Porter sifts hope from ashes." — Boston Globe
	Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston "Preston has transported us back to Fitzgerald's era . . . an entirely pleasurable tour-de-force." — Anita Shreve
	Crackpots by Sara Pritchard "The writing is dazzling . . . In the middle of tragedy, [Pritchard] makes you laugh out loud." — New York Times Book Review
	Lately by Sara Pritchard "“Dense with flavor and beautifully wrought . . . Lately demands to be savored." — Entertainment Weekly
	The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall The New York Times and #1 Essence bestseller that "turned Tara upside down." (Philadelphia Inquirer)
	Pushkin and the Queen of Spades by Alice Randall "Sexy, sharp, funny, moving . . . a love song to black America." — E. Lynn Harris
	Testament by Nino Ricci "Wonderfully vibrant . . . Ricci reimagines the life of Jesus . . . making the familiar account blossom anew." — Los Angeles Times
	Mr. Wroe's Virgins by Jane Rogers "An engaging, serious and gleefully ironic novel." — New York Times Book Review
	This is Not Civilization by Robert Rosenberg "A remarkable novel that illuminates the most important struggle of our times: to find a self and to find kindredness in a world" — Robert Olen Butler
	Everyman by Philip Roth "A swift, brutal novel about a heartbreakingly ordinary subject . . . The book leaves you a little breathless." — Boston Globe
	The Plot Against America by Philip Roth "Provocative . . . Deeply affecting . . . An intimate glimpse of one family's harrowing encounter with history." — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
	Story-Wallah by Shyam Selvadurai This is the most up-to-date, highest-profile collection of bestselling and new writers from a South Asian background, including Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, Hanif Kureishi, and Monica Ali.
	The Real Minerva by Mary Sharratt "An intriguing tale of three strong women [that brings] a small, seemingly placid town to unpredictable life." — BookPage
	The Vanishing Point by Mary Sharratt "A passionate, spell-casting story. The world Mary Sharratt creates is vivid, intimate, evocative. I was unable to put this book down." — Sandra Gulland, author of the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy
	Drives Like a Dream by Porter Shreve "Shreve once again demonstrates his talent for creating richly complicated characters and then giving them the kind of second chances we all wish we could have in our own lives." — Margot Livesey
	The Obituary Writer by Porter Shreve "Taut, compelling, and moving . . . engrossing from start to finish." — Tim O'Brien
	The Visible World: A Novel by Mark Slouka An immensely moving, powerfully romantic novel about the vagaries of love and the legacy of war, The Visible World is narrated by the American-born son of Czech immigrants.
	Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate An enthralling novel of three generations of African American women struggling against all odds to express what lies deepest in their hearts, Third Girl from the Left is a deeply moving and ambitious story of one quintessentially American family.
	Now Is the Hour by Tom Spanbauer "Sophisticated, funny, poignant, sexy coming-of-age novel" Booklist, ALA, Starred Review
	London Bridges by Jane Stevenson "An exhilarating read . . . refreshingly lighthearted, urbanely witty, and evocative of place." — Sunday Telegraph
	The Winter Queen by Jane Stevenson "A complex, touching, and beautifully described passion between wordly-wise royals." — Newsday
	Torch by Cheryl Strayed "A deeply compelling, wonderfully crafted story about a journey into, through, and past grief." — Elizabeth Berg
	The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien "Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century." — Sunday Telegraph
	The Book of Salt by Monique Truong "A grand and magical narrative that explores a side of Paris ignored by the legends of the Lost Generation." — Baltimore Sun
	The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay "Upadhyay writes about . . . contemporary South Asia with tenderness, compassion, and rare insight." — Amitav Ghosh
	The Distance from the Heart of Things by Ashley Warlick "Written straight from the heart but wise as well, a celebration of a place in a blue million." — Washington Post
	Seek the Living by Ashley Warlick "[A] lush tale of a woman trying to hang on to what she has while struggling to get what she wants . . . Beautifully rendered." — People
	A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb "The author's poetic prose, capturing the spirit and sorrow of the two unearthly protagonists, will likely have a mesmerizing effect on readers." — Publishers Weekly

Featured Reader's Guides

Nonfiction Titles