What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Lonely Hearts Hotel
Heather O'Neill · 389 pages
The Lonely Hearts Hote is a love story with the power of legend. Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most
Geek Love
Katherine Dunn · 355 pages
Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback O
Birchwood
John Banville · 175 pages
An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of The Sea. I am therefore I think. So starts John Banville's 1973 novel Birchwood, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets--a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmoth
Mr. Vertigo
Paul Auster · 293 pages
In Mr. Vertigo, his dazzling eighth novel, Paul Auster introduces a quintessentially American hero who, early in his life, masters the art of the unimaginable, and then must live out his days long after the magic has been lost and forgotten. It is 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh - and of Walter Claireborne Rawley, a streetwise orphan from Saint Louis who becomes "Walt the Wonder
The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman · 384 pages
Coney Island, 1911: Coralie Sardie is the daughter of a self-proclaimed scientist and professor who acts as the impresario of The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a boardwalk freak show offering amazement and entertainment to the masses. An extraordinary swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a 100 year old turtle, in her father's "mus
The Palace of Curiosities
Rosie Garland · 352 pages
"Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps... and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn't cry - she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, and the mudlarks search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But, how has h
Madeleine is Sleeping
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum · 276 pages
Rain Village
Carolyn Turgeon · 320 pages
Young Tessa is a diminutive girl, far too small for farm work and the object of ridicule by both her own family and the other children in their isolated Midwestern community. Her father seems to believe in nothing beyond his crops, certainly not education for his misfit daughter. When a mysterious, entrancing librarian comes to town, full of fabulous stories, earthy wisdom and potions for the love
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti
Genevieve Valentine · 284 pages
"Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic. That magic is no accident: Bo
The Quiet Girl
Peter Hoeg · 416 pages
Set in Denmark in the here and now, The Quiet Girl centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his he
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician
Daniel Wallace · 257 pages
From the author of Big Fish comes this haunting, tender story that weaves a tragic secret, a mysterious meeting with the Devil, and a family of charming circus freaks recounting the extraordinary adventures of their friend Henry Walker, the Negro Magician. In the middle of a dusty Southern town, in the middle of the twentieth century, magician Henry Walker entertains crowds at Jeremiah Musgrove's
The Carnivorous Carnival
Lemony Snicket · 286 pages
Dear reader, The word "carnivorous," which appears in the title of this book, means "meat-eating," and once you have read such a bloodthirsty word, there is no reason to read any further. This carnivorous volume contains such a distressing story that consuming any of its contents would be far more stomach-turning than even the most imbalanced meal. To avoid causing discomfort, it would be be
Fifth Business
Robertson Davies · 272 pages
"Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross, and destined to be caught in a no-man's-land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious influence on those around him. His appare
The Healer's War
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough · 335 pages
Lord of the Shadows
Darren Shan · 220 pages
Darren Shan is going home--and his world is going to hell. Old enemies await. Scores must be settled. Destiny looks certain to destroy him, and the world is doomed to fall to the Ruler of the Night....
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories
Angela Carter · 480 pages
From early reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of vampires and werewolves, to stunning snapshots of real-life outcasts and the glorious but tainted world of "the rich and famous," this complete collection of Angela Carter's short stories gathers together four published books - Fireworks, The Bloody Chamber, Black Venus, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders - with her ear
Carnival
Rawi Hage · 304 pages
Fly is a taxi driver in a crime-ridden apocalyptic metropolis. Raised in the circus, Fly sees everything, taking in all of the city's carnivalesque beauty and ugliness as he roves through its dizzying streets in his taxi. Fly is a reader, too, his tiny apartment filled with books. His best friend is Otto, a political activist who's in and out of jails and asylums. One night Fly meets Mary, a book-
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury · 293 pages
Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury's unparalleled literary classic SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The
The Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafon · 537 pages
From master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind, comes The Angel's Game--a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love."The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that, when I opened those windows, its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets I could capture on p
Twilight Eyes
Dean Koontz · 471 pages
Sought by police for murder, slim Mackenzie, a young man both blessed and cursed by "twilight eyes," stalks the diabolical "Others," who feed their twisted needs with human suffering.