Sweeping Romances

"Read the original stories that inspired some of the greatest romantic movies of all time."  This list was prepared by New Line Cinema to celebrate the release of The Notebook based on the book The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. See the corresponding movie list Romance @ the Movies.

	Jane Austen. Emma Austen perceptively and comically reveals to the reader the life of the English countryside, with its social nuance and mischievousness and most masterfully elevates "the trivialities of day-to-day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances", (Virginia Woolf). At the center of this world is her inimitable character, Emma Woodhouse, a self-proclaimed matchmaker who just may find herself the victim of her own best intentions.
	Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen's first published novel, sparkling with wit and artistry, captures the inequities of birth, class, and marriage faced by the sisters Dashwood.
	Michael Blake. Dances with Wolves Lieutenant John Dunbar arrived at Fort Sedgewick anxious to be a good U.S. soldier. Instead, he found himself charmed by the Comanche people and, before he knew it, became one of them, loving an Indian woman and going by a new name, Dances with Wolves.
	Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte characterized the eponymous heroine of her 1847 novel as being "as poor and plain as myself." Presenting a heroine with neither great beauty nor entrancing charm was an unprecendented maneuver, but Bronte's instincts proved correct, for readers of her era and ever after have taken Jane Eyre into their hearts.
	Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights Heathcliff comes to the brooding mansion of Wuthering Heights as an orphan child. Cathy is the daughter of the wealthy family that takes him in. They fall in love but cannot be together, and yet they cannot stay apart.
	A. S. Byatt. Possession As a pair of young scholars research the lives of two Victorian poets, they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire-- from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany. What emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passion and ideas.
	Tracy Chevalier. Girl with a Pearl Earring With the precision and focus of an Old Master's painting, "Girl with a Pearl Earring" paints a vivid portrait of colorful 17th-century Delft, as well as the hauntingly poignant story of one young girl's rite of passage.
	James Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans A classic portrait of the man of moral courage who severs all ties with a society whose values he can no longer accept.
	Michael Cunningham. The Hours The author of "Flesh and Blood" draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.
	Iris Rainer Dart. Beaches "A touching story of the friendship between two very different women. Cee Cee Bloom, with her loud mouth, loud personality and flaming red hair, is determined to become a Hollywood star. Bertie White, delicate and conservative, hopes for a loving husband and family. They meet as children in 1951 in Atlantic City, and, as pen pals, keep in touch with each other. Their reunions through the years always occur at or near the beach." - School Library Journal
	Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa Dinesen gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives.
	Andre Dubus III. House of Sand and Fog An American tragedy, "The House of Sand and Fog" turns both the traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story upside down with a heartrending outcome in a master stroke of American realism and Shakespearean consequence.
	Laura Esquivel. Like Water for Chocolate This charming, imaginative, and just plain fun novel of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico includes unique recipes at the beginning of each chapter for a variety of traditional dishes.
	Helen Fielding. Bridget Jones's Diary Bridget Jones's Diary charts a devastatingly self-aware, hilarious year in the life of a thirty-something Singleton. Here is the daily chronicle of her permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement - a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1 1/2 inches, visit the gym three times a week not merely to buy a sandwich, and form a functional relationship with a responsible adult.
	F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby Gatsby embodies the naive American notion that it is possible to invent oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. Gatsby 's youthful neighbor, Nick Carraway, fascinated by both the display of enormous wealth and the essential integrity that he perceives in Gatsby 's vision, becomes his confidante and accomplice in his plan to recapture the heart of Daisy Buchanan.
	Fannie Flagg. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Tells the tale of two women and the cafe they ran in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering barbecue, coffee, love, laughter--and an occasional murder.
	E.M. Forster. Howard's End E.M. Forster unveils the English character as never before, exploring the underlying class warfare involving three distinct groups--a wealthy family bound by the rules of tradition and property, two independent, cultured sisters, and a young man living on the edge of poverty. The source of their conflict--Howards End, a house in the countryside which ultimately becomes a symbol of conflict within British society.
	E.M. Forster. A Room with a View Visiting Italy with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England she becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil Vyse, but finds herself increasingly torn between the expectations of the world in which she moves and the passionate yearnings of her heart.
	John Fowles. The French Lieutenant's Woman A woman , ostracized by Victorian society and abandoned by her French lieutenant lover, fascinates a man who resolves to unravel the mystery of her clandestine past. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a feat of seductive storytelling that effectively invents anew the Victorian novel.
	Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain "Cold Mountain" is a magnificent love story in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms", and a breathtaking account of one man's voyage home from the front at the end of the Civil War. Epic in sweep and heartbreakingly told.
	Graham Greene. The End of the Affair  The novelist Maurice Bendrix's love affair with his friend's wife, Sarah, had begun in London during the Blitz. One day, inexplicably and without warning, Sarah had broken off the relationship. It seemed impossible that there could be a rival for her heart. Yet two years later, driven by obsessive jealousy and grief, Bendrix sends Pakris, a private detective, to follow Sarah and find out the truth.
	Joanne Harris. Chocolat Just a few days before Lent, a flamboyant woman and her daughter open a chocolate shop in a small French town and create a stir with their seemingly magical sweet-treat remedies for life's problems.
	Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell To Arms By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front.
	Kazuo Ishiguro. The Remains of the Day A profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading insular world in postwar England.
	Henry James. The Wings of the Dove A gravely ill young woman searches for happiness and self-fulfillment.
	James Jones. From Here to Eternity In this magnificent but brutal classic of a soldier's life, James Jones portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who live by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair...in the most important American novel to come out of World War II, a masterpiece that captures as no ther the honor and savagery of men.
	D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover Constance Chatterley, married to an aristocrat and mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent, has an affair with Mellors, a gamekeeper, becomes pregnant, and considers abandoning her husband.
	Carson McCullers. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter A sensitive teenage girl discovers the meaning of loneliness.
	Terry McMillan. How Stella Got Her Groove Back Stella Payne, a 42-yr. old divorced investment analyst, takes a vacation in Jamaica where she meets a Jamaican man half her age. Through this relationship, she soon realizes that she must confront her hopes and fears about love and about life and the way she lives it.
	Larry McMurtry. Terms of Endearment The story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter and their struggle to find the courage and humor to live through life's hazards -- and to love each other as never before.
	Margaret Mitchell. Gone with the Wind A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.
	Toni Morrison. Beloved Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade.
	Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl.
	Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.
	Boris Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago Connecting images and episodes describe the great feeling and effect of the Russian Revolution on a variety of characters, but in particular on a sensitive young doctor .
	Edmond Rostand. Cyrano de Bergerac Edmond Rostand's bittersweet melodrama tells the tale of France's master swordsman--Cyrano de Bergerac, a valiant soldier cursed with the face of a clown. Gallantry, love, poetry, and failure all combine in this timeless classic.
	Erich Segal. Love Story The story of a rich Harvard jock and a wisecracking Radcliffe music major who have nothing in common but love . . . and everything to share but time.
	William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet It is the most famous tragic romance of all time. The noble houses of Montague and Capulet are caught in a long-standing blood feud. But somehow, against all odds, Romeo of the Montagues and Juliet of the Capulets fall deeply in love, a star-crossed affair that can only end in disaster.
	Nicholas Sparks. A Walk to Remember A teenage boy in 1950s North Carolina falls in love with a minister's daughter during his senior year and discovers the truths about the nature of beauty, the joy of giving, the pain of loss, and the transformational power of love.
	Scott Spencer. Endless Love David's and Jade's lives are consumed with each other; their rapport, their desire, their sexuality take them further than they understand. And when Jade's father suddenly banishes David from the house, he fantasizes the forgiveness his rescue of the family will bring and he sets a "perfectly safe" fire to their house. What unfolds is a nightmare, a dark world in which David's love is a crime and a disease, a world of anonymous phone calls, crazy letters, and new fears -- and the inevitable and punishing pursuit of the one thing that remains most real to him: his endless love for Jade and her family.
	John Steinbeck. East of Eden   This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
	William Styron. Sophie's Choice Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
	Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist Meet Macon Leary--a travel writer who hates both travel and strangeness. Grounded by loneliness, comfort, and a somewhat odd domestic life, Macon is about to embark on a surprising new adventure, arriving in the form of a fuzzy-haired dog obedience trainer who promises to turn his life around.
	Charles Webb. The Graduate This classic novel about a naive college graduate adrift in the shifting social and sexual mores of the 1960s captures with hilarity and insight the alienation of youth and the disillusionment of an era.