Title Recommendations based on Frances Houseman

Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.

Fan
Save
Pass
High School Musical

Troy (Zac Efron), the popular captain of the basketball team, and Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens), the brainy and beautiful member of the academic club, break all the rules of East High society when they secretly audition for the leads in the school's musical. As they reach for the stars and follow their dreams, everyone learns about acceptance, teamwork, and being yourself.

Fan
Save
Pass
Castle

Richard Castle is a mystery novel writer. He got famous and rich for his character Derrick Storm, but after killing off Derrick, Castle has no idea what to do next. Luckily (for him, anyway), he's brought in as a consultant for the NYPD when they discover a series of murders that are seemingly based on his novels. Working that one case with Detective Kate Beckett cures his writer's block entirely, giving him a new spark of inspiration.

Fan
Save
Pass
Enchanted

The beautiful princess Giselle is banished by an evil queen from her magical, musical animated land and finds herself in the gritty reality of the streets of modern-day Manhattan. Shocked by this strange new environment that doesn't operate on a "happily ever after" basis, Giselle is now adrift in a chaotic world badly in need of enchantment. But when Giselle begins to fall in love with a charmingly flawed divorce lawyer who has come to her aid—even though she is already promised to a perfect fairy tale prince back home—she has to wonder whether a storybook view of romance survive in the real world.

Fan
Save
Pass
NCIS

NCIS: Los Angeles is focused on an elite team of investigators tasked with solving the military's most difficult and perplexing crimes, ranging from high level securities heists to full scale terrorist plots. It's fast paced work, but jokes and banter between Sam Hanna and G. Callen keep things from getting too heavy.

Fan
Save
Pass
Girl Meets World

The curious and bright 7th grader Riley Matthews and her quick-witted friend Maya Fox embark on an unforgettable middle school experience. But their plans for a carefree year will be adjusted slightly under the watchful eyes of Riley's parents: dad Cory, who's also a faculty member (and their new History teacher), and mom Topanga, who owns a trendy afterschool hangout that specializes in pudding.

Fan
Save
Pass
The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries features a love triangle ending with blood and gore. Damon wanted Katherine to turn him so that the two could spend eternity together. But Katherine was also seeing his brother Stefan, and gave her blood to both of them to become vampires. Infuriated, Damon promised his brother "an eternity of misery." Sibling rivalry can get pretty intense.

Fan
Save
Pass
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance.But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Fan
Save
Pass
Slumdog Millionaire

Jamal Malik is an impoverished Indian teen who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" But, after he wins, he is suspected of cheating.

Fan
Save
Pass
The Crown

The Crown is a decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The show shares all the details of two of the most famous addresses in the world? Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street? and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. Two houses, two courts, one Crown.

Fan
Save
Pass
Downton Abbey

When Matthew Crawley is named heir to Lord Grantham's estate of Downton Abbey, he and his mother leave their upper-middle-class life and enter the world of aristocrats. It won't be an easy transition. Lady Violet Crawley isn't so keen on letting a stranger butt into the practice, (distant) relative or not.

Fan
Save
Pass
Les Miserables

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism, and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him, and has been a perennial favorite since it first appeared over 150 years ago. This exciting new translation with Jillian Tamaki's brilliant cover art will be a gift both to readers who have already fallen for its timeless story and to new readers discovering it for the first time.

Fan
Save
Pass
The Sims Online

The Sims put the player in control of an household of "sims" in order to direct their daily routine, which includes finding a job, befriending neighbors and addressing their basic needs.

Fan
Save
Pass
The Wolf of Wall Street

A New York stockbroker refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, corporate banking world and mob infiltration.

Fan
Save
Pass
Saw

Obsessed with teaching his victims the value of life, a deranged and sadistic serial killer abducts the morally wayward. Once captured, they must face impossible choices in a horrific game of survival. The victims must fight to win their lives back, or die trying.

Fan
Save
Pass