What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorWhere the Lilies Bloom
Vera Cleaver, Bill Cleaver · 175 pages
In the Great Smoky Mountains region, a fourteen-year-old girl struggles to keep her family together after their father dies.
M.C. Higgins, the Great
Virginia Hamilton · 278 pages
Hamilton’s classic coming-of-age tale: The National Book Award– and Newbery Award–winning novel about a young man who must choose between supporting his tight-knit family and pursuing his own dreams Mayo Cornelius Higgins perches on top of a homemade forty-foot tower, considering two destinies. Behind him is his family’s beloved house at the foot of a mountain that strip mining has reduced t
The Rescue
Nicholas Sparks · 446 pages
One of America's bestselling authors returns with a tale about the greatest commitment of all: loving someone forever. When a near-fatal car crash brings Taylor McAden together with Denise Holden, a new resident of Edenton, North Carolina, he must look into his past to see if it's not too late to take a chance on the future.
As Brave As You
Jason Reynolds · 405 pages
Genie's summer is full of surprises. The first is that he and his big brother, Ernie, are leaving Brooklyn for the very first time to spend the summer with their grandparents all the way in Virginia. The second surprise comes when Genie figures out that their grandfather is blind. Genie thinks Grandpop must be the bravest guy he's ever known, but he starts to notice that his grandfather never leav
We Begin at the End
Chris Whitaker · 400 pages
There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages
"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi
Gather
Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages
Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.
Cold Sassy Tree
Olive Ann Burns · 395 pages
Had difficulty with the unfamiliar language spoken by the characters, but once I was able to figure it out I enjoyed the family dynamics. Upon finishing this book, I immediately borrowed "Leaving Cold Sassy".
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 224 pages
A brilliant, graphic novel written by young but promising Patrick Ness. This is the story about 13 year old Conor and his mother who is dying of cancer. Conor has to face the cruelty of real life and learn to let his close and dearest go. When no human can help him Monster appears...
Football Genius
Tim Green · 244 pages
Troy, a sixth-grader with an unusual gift for predicting football plays before they occur, attempts to use his ability to help his favorite team, the Atlanta Falcons, but he must first prove himself to the coach and players.
Out of the Darkness
Lauren Brooke · 153 pages
The Well: David's Story
Mildred D. Taylor · 92 pages
In Mississippi in the early 1900s ten-year-old David Logan's family generously shares their well water with both white and black neighbors in an atmosphere of potential racial violence.
Run with the Horsemen
Ferrol Sams · 422 pages
A boy's story of growing up on an ancestral farm in Georgia in the early 1900s.
47
Walter Mosley · 232 pages
Walter Mosley is one of the best-known writers in America. In his first book for young adults, Mosley deftly weaves historical and speculative fiction into a powerful narrative about the nature of freedom. 47 is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a brutal slave master. His life seems doomed until he meets a mysterious runaway slave, Tall John. Then, 47 finds himself swept up in a s
All Over But the Shoutin'
Rick Bragg · 329 pages
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the hab
Among the Hidden
Margaret Peterson Haddix · 156 pages
Twelve-year old Luke Garner struggles with his life as a shadow child, until he meets his daring new neighbor, Jen. Among the Hidden is a 1998 young adult novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix concerning a fictional future in which overly drastic measures have been taken to quell overpopulation. It is the first of seven novels in the "Shadow Children" series.
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward · 274 pages
They heard it on the radio. A hurricane is coming, threatening the town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Esch's hard-drinking father can feel it in his bones. Esch and her brothers are trying to help prepare, but there are other worries too. Skeetah is watching his prized pit bull, helpless as her new litter dies one by one. Randall, when not preoccupied with basketball, is busy looking after the you
Wish You Well
David Baldacci · 401 pages
Precocious 12-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives inthe hectic New York City of 1940 with her family.Then tragedy strikes--and Lou and her younger brother,Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on theirgreat-grandmother's farm in the Virginia mountains.Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a newlandscape, making her first true friend, and experiencingadventures tragic, comic, and audac
A Snicker of Magic
Natalie Lloyd · 323 pages
✨️A Snicker of Magic ✨ Felicity Pickle has a gift: she sees words everywhere—fluttering above people’s heads, painted in the air, waiting to be collected. But when she and her family roll into the town of Midnight Gulch, Felicity discovers the place might still hold a snicker of magic—if she’s brave enough to believe in it. With quirky characters, small-town secrets, and heartwarming adventures
Bucking the Sarge
Christopher Paul Curtis · 273 pages
Luther T. Farrell has got to get out of Flint, Michigan.As his best friend Sparky says, "Flint's nothing but the Titanic."And his mother, a.k.a. the Sarge, says, "Take my advice and stay off the sucker path."The Sarge milked the system to build an empire of slum housing and group homes. Luther's just one of the many people trapped in the Sarge's Evil Empire--but he's about to bust out.If Luther wi
Worth
A. LaFaye · 152 pages
After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse.
Old Yeller
Fred Gipson · 158 pages
At first, Travis couldn't stand the sight of Old Yeller. The stray dog was ugly, and a thieving rascal, too. But he sure was clever, and a smart dog could be a big help on the wild Texas frontier, especially with Papa away on a long cattle drive up to Abilene. Strong and courageous, Old Yeller proved that he could protect Travis's family from any sort of danger. But can Travis do the same for O