RoseHeart22 | Pagebound

RoseHeart22

775 points

0% overlap

Gothic Literature

British & Irish Classic Literature

Cherry Blossom Festival 2026

Gothic Literature

British & Irish Classic Literature

Cherry Blossom Festival 2026

My Taste

The Hearing Trumpet

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Ulysses

Find Him!: A Novel (Modern Library Torchbearers)

Reading...

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (Tales of the Weird)

61%

RoseHeart22 earned a badge

6h

Whispers in the Walls

Whispers in the Walls

Silver: Finished 10 Main Quest books.

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1d

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (Tales of the Weird)

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (Tales of the Weird)

Manon Burz-Labrande

61%

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RoseHeart22 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

1d

Worldwide Women’s Writing Recs?

Hi Pagebound!

I hope everyone is doing well and reading a lot :) I was hoping to get some recommendations for books/plays/short stories/anything really written by women throughout the world. I am teaching a global women’s writing class this fall and have a TON of ideas but also feel like I want to explore even more before I finalize, so I was hoping to find some recs here! I’ve already looked through some lists of translated works, but haven’t quite found a list with what I’m looking for exactly.

Works I’m heavily considering for the syllabus rn: The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue Some of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami The Vegetarian by Han Kang Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman My Name will Grow Wide like a Tree by Yi Lei Maybe works by d’Aulnoy, Tove Jansson, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

As you can see, what’s driving me crazy is I am missing out on the entire continent of Africa (I am sad that most of the works I’ve read are typically Nigerian or South African and always by men!), India, and the SWANA region.

Any recommendations would be amazing and so appreciated!! Thank you for taking the time!

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RoseHeart22 is interested in reading...

1d

The Dragonfly Sea

The Dragonfly Sea

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

From the award-winning author of Dust comes a vibrant, stunning coming-of-age novel about a young woman struggling to find her place in a vast world--a poignant exploration of fate, mortality, love, and loss. On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, lives solitary, stubborn Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself--from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China. Ayaana ends up embarking on a dramatic ship's journey to the Far East, where she will discover friends and enemies; be seduced by the charming but unreliable scion of a powerful Turkish business family; reclaim her devotion to the sea; and come to find her own tenuous place amid a landscape of beauty and violence and surprising joy. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world. NAMED A REAL SIMPLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

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1d

La bastarda

La bastarda

Trifonia Melibea Obono

La protagonista, Okomo, una adolescente de etnia fang, atrapada en un sistema de valores que no le permite desarrollar su personalidad, se anima a emprender la búsqueda de su progenitor, cuya identidad le ocultan sus mayores. El viaje la llevará a recorrer su país, en el que se encontrará con las secuelas del colonialismo aún vigentes. En su camino, conocerá a otros personajes que, como ella, se rebelan contra las convenciones sociales y con quienes vivirá experiencias que la transformarán para siempre.La obra, que contiene información sociológica y antropológica de primera mano, es un relato valiente y directo sobre el conflicto entre la estructura familiar y las creencias ancestrales de los fang y los deseos de libertad de las nuevas generaciones en el África subsahariana.

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1d

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

Mariana Enríquez

Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges. Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly. Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

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1d

Natural Beauty

Natural Beauty

Ling Ling Huang

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister. A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.

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1d

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Irene Solà

Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of stories unspool, and the house reverberates with raucous laughter, pungent feasts, and piercing cries of pleasure and pain. It all begins with Joana, Mas Clavell’s matriarch, who once longed for a husband―“a full man,” perhaps even “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” She summoned the devil to fulfill her wish and struck a deal: a man in exchange for her soul. But when, on her wedding day, Joana discovered that her husband was missing a toe (eaten by wolves), she exploited a loophole in her agreement, heedless of what consequences might follow.

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1d

Fairy Tale Retellings

Fairy Tale Retellings

Bronze: Finished 5 Main Quest books.

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1w

The Monstrous Feminine

The Monstrous Feminine

Silver: Finished 10 Main Quest books.

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RoseHeart22 earned a badge

3w

Classic Literature from the United States

Classic Literature from the United States

Gold: Finished 15 Main Quest books.

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5w

This Hostel Life

This Hostel Life

Melatu Uche Okorie

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS SUNDAY INDEPENDENT NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR'A landmark book by an important new voice in Irish writing' EMILIE PINETHIS HOSTEL LIFE tells the stories of migrant women in a hidden Ireland.Queuing for basic supplies in an Irish direct provision hostel, a group of women squabble and mistrust each other, learning what they can of the world from conversations about reality television and Shakespeare. In another story, a student shares her work with a class only to be critiqued about her own lived experience, and a mother of young twins, living in Nigeria, is at risk of losing her newborns to ancient superstitious beliefs.An essay by Liam Thornton (UCD School of Law) is also included, explaining the Irish legal position in relation to asylum seekers and direct provision.'Fresh, devastating stories . . . Okorie writes with uncomfortable clarity about things we think we already know' LIA MILLS 'Melatu Uche Okorie has important things to say - and she does it quite brilliantly' RODDY DOYLE

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5w

Straight from the Horse's Mouth

Straight from the Horse's Mouth

Meryem Alaoui

This hilarious, colorful portrait of a sex worker navigating life in modern Morocco introduces a promising new literary voice. Thirty-four-year-old prostitute Jmiaa reflects on the bustling world around her with a brutal honesty, but also a quick wit that cuts through the drudgery. Like many of the women in her working-class Casablanca neighborhood, Jmiaa struggles to earn enough money to support herself and her family—often including the deadbeat husband who walked out on her and their young daughter. While she doesn’t despair about her profession like her roommate, Halima, who reads the Quran between clients, she still has to maintain a delicate balance between her reality and the “respectable” one she paints for her own more conservative mother. This daily grind is interrupted by the arrival of an aspiring young director, Chadlia, whom Jmiaa takes to calling “Horse Mouth.” Chadlia enlists Jmiaa’s help on a film project, initially just to make sure the plot and dialogue are authentic. But when she’s unable to find an actress who’s right for the starring role, she turns again to Jmiaa, giving the latter an incredible opportunity for a better life. In her breakout debut novel, Meryem Alaoui creates a vibrant picture of the day-to-day challenges faced by working people in Casablanca, which they meet head-on with resourcefulness and resilience.

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5w

The Queue

The Queue

Basma Abdel Aziz

Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising, The Queue is a chilling debut that evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring.In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer. Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the brother of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet. Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehia’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehia and save his life. Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.From the Trade Paperback edition.

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5w

A Girl Is a Body of Water

A Girl Is a Body of Water

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

In her twelfth year, Kirabo, a young Ugandan girl, confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small village of Nattetta—her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts, but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Complicating these feelings of abandonment, as Kirabo comes of age she feels the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her at odds with her sweet and obedient nature. Seeking answers, Kirabo begins spending afternoons with Nsuuta, a local witch, trading stories and learning not only about this force inside her, but about the woman who birthed her, who she learns is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also explains that Kirabo has a streak of the “first woman”—an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women. Kirabo’s journey to reconcile her rebellious origins, alongside her desire to reconnect with her mother and to honor her family’s expectations, is rich in the folklore of Uganda and an arresting exploration of what it means to be a modern girl in a world that seems determined to silence women. Makumbi’s unforgettable novel is a sweeping testament to the true and lasting connections between history, tradition, family, friends, and the promise of a different future.

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RoseHeart22 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

5w

Worldwide Women’s Writing Recs?

Hi Pagebound!

I hope everyone is doing well and reading a lot :) I was hoping to get some recommendations for books/plays/short stories/anything really written by women throughout the world. I am teaching a global women’s writing class this fall and have a TON of ideas but also feel like I want to explore even more before I finalize, so I was hoping to find some recs here! I’ve already looked through some lists of translated works, but haven’t quite found a list with what I’m looking for exactly.

Works I’m heavily considering for the syllabus rn: The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue Some of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami The Vegetarian by Han Kang Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman My Name will Grow Wide like a Tree by Yi Lei Maybe works by d’Aulnoy, Tove Jansson, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

As you can see, what’s driving me crazy is I am missing out on the entire continent of Africa (I am sad that most of the works I’ve read are typically Nigerian or South African and always by men!), India, and the SWANA region.

Any recommendations would be amazing and so appreciated!! Thank you for taking the time!

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RoseHeart22 earned a badge

5w

Fever Dreams & Strange Realities

Fever Dreams & Strange Realities

Silver: Finished 10 Main Quest books.

1

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RoseHeart22 finished a book

5w

Disappoint Me

Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

After a rough tumble and maybe-serious head injury, a disillusioned trans poet falls for a charming corporate lawyer in a love story that grapples with the explosive ghosts of relationships past, romantic and familial, from the Lambda Award-nominated author of Bellies, Nicola Dinan “Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.” Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. With a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued with a deep dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker, whose trad friendship group may as well speak a foreign language, and whose Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. This uncharted territory may have rough terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage from his gap year in Thailand a decade prior: an explosive entanglement with a mysterious, gorgeous traveler. Voice-driven, warm, and poignant, Disappoint Me is an exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bourgeois domesticity that asks if we are defined by our worst mistakes.

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5w

Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn

Daphne du Maurier

The coachman tried to warn her away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But young Mary Yellan chose instead to honor her mother's dying request that she join her frightened Aunt Patience and huge, hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn's dark power. But never did Mary dream that she would become hopelessly ensnared in the vile, villainous schemes being hatched within its crumbling walls—or that a handsome, mysterious stranger would so incite her passions... tempting her to love a man whom she dares not trust.

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8w

A Sunny Place for Shady People

A Sunny Place for Shady People

Mariana Enríquez

A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors” (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women. Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists. Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”

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