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The Bottoms

Joe R. Lansdale · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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Child NarratorAmerican SouthComing of AgeRacism
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain · 330 pages

Child NarratorAmerican SouthRacismComing of Age
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A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Child NarratorAmerican SouthComing of AgeRacism
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Boy's Life

Robert McCammon · 541 pages

"Zephyr, Alabama, has been an idyllic home for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson...a place where monsters swim in the belly of the river, and friends are forever. Then, on a cold spring morning in 1964, as Cory accompanies his father on his milk route, they see a car plunge into a lake some say is bottomless." -- Back cover.

Child NarratorAmerican SouthComing of AgeSerial Killer
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Montana 1948

Larry Watson · 175 pages

Child NarratorComing of AgeRacismSmall Town
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Chiefs

Stuart Woods · 432 pages

American SouthSerial KillerRacismSmall Town
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Glory Be

Augusta Scattergood · 205 pages

In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.

Child NarratorAmerican SouthRacismComing of Age
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Leaving Atlanta

Tayari Jones · 263 pages

"It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981. Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world thei

Child NarratorAmerican SouthSerial KillerRacism
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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens · 384 pages

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons

American SouthComing of AgeAtmosphericSmall Town
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Let Me Die in His Footsteps

Lori Roy · 352 pages

On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 halfway between her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran runs through the lavender fields to the well on the Baines' place. Hollerans don't go near Baines since Joseph Carl was buried two decades ago. At the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water in search of her future. When the body she sees there in the moonlight is discovered come morning, An

American SouthAtmosphericComing of AgeSmall Town
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Floating in My Mother's Palm

Ursula Hegi · 187 pages

"From an award winning author comes a deeply personal and powerful account of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in a small town in Germany in the 1950s. Hanna conjours up unforgettably the events of her youth: her magical bond to her unconventional mother; her friendship with an illegitmate son of an American GI; and the lessons in local lore that are served with tea and innuendo by the town's

Child NarratorComing of AgeAtmosphericSmall Town
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Child NarratorComing of AgeAmerican SouthRacism
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The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Coming of AgeRacismAtmosphericSmall Town
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Ordinary Grace

William Kent Krueger · 320 pages

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Coming of AgeChild NarratorSmall TownAtmospheric
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Breakheart Hill

Thomas H. Cook · 319 pages

Only one person truly knows what happened to Kelli Troy on that fateful night almost thirty years ago and he is determined not to break his silence.

American SouthRacismAtmosphericSmall Town
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The Education of Dixie Dupree

Donna Everhart · 352 pages

Child NarratorAmerican SouthComing of AgeSmall Town
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Crazy in Alabama

Mark Childress · 383 pages

The tale of Peejoe, an orphan boy who comes of age during a racially restless summer in the Alabama, and his aunt Lucille, who jumps at the chance to escape her life for a role on the "Beverly Hillbillies."

American SouthComing of AgeRacismLiterary Fiction
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The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthSmall TownRacism
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers · 334 pages

Set in 1930s Georgia, the novel centers around a deaf and mute man, John Singer. Singer has been devastated by the loss of his dear friend, Antonapoulos, who was committed to an asylum for bad behavior

American SouthComing of AgeRacismSmall Town
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The Great Santini

Pat Conroy · 475 pages

American SouthRacismComing of AgeSmall Town
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Tallgrass

Sandra Dallas · 320 pages

During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. This is Tallgrass as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what

Child NarratorRacismComing of AgeSmall Town
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Intruder in the Dust

William Faulkner · 247 pages

Using his preferred stream-of-consciousness style the author tells a story of a black farmer in Mississippi accused of murdering a white man.

American SouthComing of AgeRacismSmall Town
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Zora and Me

Victoria Bond, T.R. Simon

A fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood with her best friend Carrie, in Eatonville, Florida, as they learn about life, death, and the differences between truth, lies, and pretending. Includes an annotated bibliography of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, a short biography of the author, and information about Eatonville, Florida.

RacismComing of AgeAmerican SouthSmall Town
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Penumbra

Carolyn Haines · 280 pages

The daughter of a white mother and black father, beautician and undertaker's assistant Jade Dupree comes to the aid of her white half-sister, Marlena, when the woman is found badly beaten and her young daughter kidnapped.

RacismAmerican SouthAtmosphericSmall Town

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