Books like The last Mrs. Astor by Frances Kiernan

The Goldfinch chronicles the life of thirteen‑year‑old Theo Decker, who survives a museum attack that kills his mother and carries an art piece that becomes a lifelong obsession, exploring loss, identity, and art in contemporary America.

In Edith Wharton’s classic, Lily Bart, a beautiful and intelligent young woman devoted to luxury, struggles to navigate New York’s strict social hierarchy and moral expectations, ultimately confronting the limits of her independence.

In 1883 New York City, two women doctors from the Woman’s Medical School treat the city’s most vulnerable amid the era’s splendor and peril, confronting poverty, anti‑vice crusader Anthony Comstock, and the harsh demands of their pasts.

A vivid portrait of life on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the turn of the nineteenth century, following Lilith, a young enslaved woman whose emerging powers draw her into a secret rebel faction.

A memoir of a Cairo Jewish family’s rise and fall during Egypt’s mid‑20th‑century upheavals, told through the eyes of Lucette Lagnado and her father Leon’s white sharkskin suit.

A biography that reveals the hidden life of Samuel M. Steward—novelist, poet, professor, and post‑Stonewall tattoo artist—through unpublished diaries and research correspondence, illustrating early homosexual existence in America.

Jimmy Breslin recounts how a 1991 aneurysm scare and subsequent surgery prompted him to reflect on his life and memory, turning a near‑death experience into an intimate memoir of resilience and New York journalism.

"Mrs. Astor, undisputed queen of New York society in the decades before the First World War, used her prestige to create a social aristocracy in the city; an invitation to one of her parties was a coveted mark of social acceptance, and exclusion meant social banishment. Mrs. Astor's story, which reads like a novel by Edith Wharton, sheds important new light on the origins, extravagant lifestyle, and social competitiveness of this aristocracy, and it is told here with vigor and elegance by Eric Homberger.". "Homberger argues that the arrival in New York of a tidal wave of new wealth after the Civil War pushed the city's old families into a redefinition of the practices and responsibilities of aristocracy. The public wanted to know more about the neighborhoods, clothes, marriages, entertainments, scandals, and divorces of the wealthy, so during the 1880s, Mrs. Astor presided over a revolution in their social visibility. With Ward McAllister she created the Patriarchs, whose annual balls were the most sought after social events of the era. She also established the "Four Hundred," the definitive list of the socially acceptable, ordaining which families could be accepted and which must remain in social exclusion. Homberger describes the festivities of this social elite, their homes and neighborhoods, and their social struggles. His diverting account of lives of discreet and not-so-discreet excess vividly recaptures New York's high society and shows how its members were transformed into America's first celebrities."--BOOK JACKET.

A personal journey from despair to hope at the world's most famous coffeehouse chain, as a once-entitled executive learns to appreciate the humanity of a young black woman and the joy of serving others.

A true story of a fifteen‑year‑old who survived the streets and later earned a place at Harvard, inspiring a Lifetime film and a career in motivational speaking.

In the 1920s, 28‑year‑old Hadley Richardson meets Ernest Hemingway in Chicago, marries him, and together they become Hollywood’s golden couple in Paris, navigating self‑doubt, jealousy, and literary ambition amid the expatriate scene.