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Absolute Truths

Susan Howatch · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

The Spire

William Golding · 224 pages

Told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative, this is a story of obsession. Against the advice of his builder, the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, slowly dying from tuberculosis, plans the construction of a towering spire atop the cathedral as the culmination of his life’s work but becomes increasingly deranged as the construction faces constant problems due to the sheer grandiosity of the work.

CathedralsFaith CrisisFall From GraceReligious Identity
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Year of Wonders

Geraldine Brooks · 310 pages

This is the story of a young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the year of 1666, when plague suddenly visits her small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elect to quarantine themselves.

Faith CrisisDeath of a SpouseReligious IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Splendor Before the Dark

Margaret George · 528 pages

Fall From GraceDeath of a SpouseCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel · 653 pages

In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power England is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him.

Death of a SpouseGrief Over a SpouseReligious IdentityCharacter-Driven
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Father Sergius

Leo Tolstoy · 88 pages

Vers l'annee 1840, St-Petersbourg fut bouleverse par un evenement dont tous resterent stupefaits: le beau prince Kassatski, chef de l'escadron d'elite du regiment des cuirassiers, futur aide de camp de l'empereur Nicolas 1er, etait alors fiance a une haute dame de la cour, non seulement celebre pour sa beaute, mais encore en grande faveur aupres de l'Imperatrice. Soudain, un mois avant le mariage,

Faith CrisisFall From GraceReligious IdentityCharacter-Driven
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Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy · 440 pages

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a liv

Faith CrisisFall From GraceReligious IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 272 pages

Fall From GraceReligious IdentityFaith CrisisCharacter-Driven
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Gilead

Marilynne Robinson · 256 pages

**WINNER OF THE 2005 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION** In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He “preached men into the Civi

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Magician of Lublin

Isaac Bashevis Singer · 246 pages

Half Jewish, half gentile, a freethinker who slips easily between worlds, Yasha has an observant Jewish wife, a gentile assistant who travels with him, and a mistress in every town. For Yasha is an escape artist, not only onstage but in life, a man who lives under the spell of his own hypnotic effect on women.

Fall From GraceFaith CrisisReligious IdentityLiterary Fiction
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The Archivist

Martha Cooley · 328 pages

A young woman's impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T. S. Eliot's letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged novel -- a story of marriage and madness, of faith and desire, of jazz-age New York and Europe in the shadow of the Holocaust. The Archivist was a word-of-mouth bestseller and one of the most jubilantly acclaimed first novels of recent years.

Grief Over a SpouseDeath of a SpouseReligious IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

Robert Dugoni · 448 pages

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Chosen

Chaim Potok · 284 pages

It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Damnation of Theron Ware: Or Illumination

Harold Frederic, Stanton Garner · 352 pages

Theron Ware is a promising young Methodist pastor recently assigned to a congregation is small town in the Adirondack Mountains. His education has been limited and his experiences limited to church society and his strict enforcement of its norms. Theron has a number of experiences that cause him to begin to question the Methodist religion, his role as a minister and the existence of God. His "i

Fall From GraceFaith CrisisReligious IdentityLiterary Fiction
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Murder in the Cathedral

T.S. Eliot · 88 pages

A dramatization in free verse and with features derived from ancient and medieval theatre of the killing of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II. Eliot used the device of a chorus, an ancient Greek invention, to express certain concerns and observations, and the killers take their turn to justify their action. When I read this play as a grammar school student in England, I

CathedralsReligious IdentityFaith CrisisHistorical Fiction
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The Last Chronicle of Barset

Anthony Trollope · 648 pages

*The Chronicles of Barsetshire, Book 6: The Last Chronicle of Barset*

CathedralsReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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The Gospel According to the Son

Norman Mailer · 242 pages

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer re-imagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ’s story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressi

Religious IdentityFaith CrisisCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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Iscariot

Tosca Lee · 394 pages

"Based on extensive research into the life and times of Judas Iscariot, this triumph of fiction storytelling ... revisits one of biblical history's most maligned figures and brings the world he inhabited vividly to life."--Provided by publisher.

Fall From GraceFaith CrisisReligious IdentityFirst Person Narrator
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Innocent Traitor

Alison Weir · 432 pages

I am now a condemned traitor . . . I am to die when I have hardly begun to live.Historical expertise marries page-turning fiction in Alison Weir's enthralling debut novel, breathing new life into one of the most significant and tumultuous periods of the English monarchy. It is the story of Lady Jane Grey--"the Nine Days' Queen"--a fifteen-year-old girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center o

Fall From GraceFaith CrisisReligious IdentityFirst Person Narrator
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The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver · 596 pages

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of on

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Dog Stars

Peter Heller · 326 pages

"Hig is a survivor. He has survived the sickness that claimed his wife and family, and the trout he loved to fish. He is coping, just, in the new wilderness of post-apocalyptic America, because he has three things to live for - his dog, Jasper, his neighbour, Bangley, and his Cessna plane. But Hig's loneliness is becoming unbearable. When he picks up the distorted voice of another human on his rad

Death of a SpouseGrief Over a SpouseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe · 192 pages

Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. It depicts pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widel

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Ever After

Graham Swift · 275 pages

Death of a SpouseFaith CrisisCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Rabbi

Noah Gordon · 389 pages

Michael Kind, descendiente de judíos criado en un barrio marginal de Nueva York, se debate entre el antagónico legado recibido por su abuelo y su educador, y el proporcionado por su padre. El abuelo le trasmitió su conciencia de pertenencia a la comunidad judía, mientras que su educador se encargó de la enseñanza religiosa. Como contrapunto a esa instrucción anclada en los orígenes de su pueblo, M

Faith CrisisReligious IdentityCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction

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