Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

 Anna, a woman of reserve and integrity, lives with her tyrannical and selfish father. Courted for her money by the handsome and successful Henry Mynors, Anna defies her father's wrath--with tragic results. Set in the Potteries against a background of dour Wesleyan Methodism, Anna of the Five Towns is a brilliantly perceptive novel of provincial life in Victorian England. 

The plot centres on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire, England. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. The novel tells of Anna's struggle for freedom and independence against her father's restraints, and her inward battle between wanting to please her father and wanting to help Willie Price whose father, Titus Price, commits suicide after falling into bankruptcy and debt. During the novel, Anna is courted by the town's most eligible bachelor Henry Mynors, and agrees to be his wife, much to her young sister Agnes' pleasure. She discovers in the end, however, that she loves Willie Price, but does not follow her heart, as he is leaving for Australia, and she is already promised to Mynors.

Love in the Jungle by May Freud Dickerson

 Love in the Jungle by May Freud Dickerson

Thrilling tale of a young lady trapped alone in the jungles in India, where she is chased by a mad man, and finally is saved by her father, only to find that she can not stay with the man most dear to her.  Then she is dragged many miles away from him to lead a new life, leaving behind a man she met and whom she truly loved.  Set in India at the turn of the last century, this is a thrilling novel of love, adventure, and hope.

Agatha's Husband by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

 

Agatha's Husband by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

If there ever was a woman thoroughly like her name, it was Agatha Bowen. She was good, in the first place-right good at heart, though with a slight external roughness (like the sound of the g in her name), which took away all sentimentalism. Then the vowels-the three broad rich a's-which no one can pronounce with nimini-pimini closed lips-how thoroughly they answered to her character!-a character in the which was nothing small, mean, cramped, or crooked. 

But if we go on unfolding her in this way, there will not be the slightest use in writing her history, or that of one in whom her life is beautifully involved and enclosed-as every married woman's should be- He was still in clouded mystery-an individual yet to be; and two other individuals had been "talking him over," feminine-fashion, in Miss Agatha Bowen's drawing-room, much to that lady's amusement and edification. 

For, being moderately rich, she had her own suite of rooms in the house where she boarded; and having no mother-sorrowful lot for a girl of nineteen!-she sometimes filled her drawing-room with very useless and unprofitable acquaintances. These two married ladies-one young, the other old-Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Thornycroft-had been for the last half-hour vexing their very hearts out to find Agatha a husband-a weakness which, it must be confessed, lurks in the heart of almost every married lady.

This is a romance and a book that all members of the family will enjoy as suspense and a 'coming of age' piece.

Indiana by George Sand

 Indiana by George Sand

Indiana is a novel about love and marriage written by Amantine Aurore Dupin; it was the first work she published under her pseudonym George Sand. Published in April 1832, the novel blends the conventions of romanticism, realism and idealism. As the novel is set partly in France and partly in the French colony of Réunion, Sand had to base her descriptions of the colony, where she had never been, on the travel writing of her friend Jules Néraud.