What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorIn the Unlikely Event
Judy Blume · 512 pages
In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and
South of Broad
Pat Conroy · 646 pages
The publishing event of the season: The one and only Pat Conroy returns, with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and to lifelong friendship.Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local
Ten Things I've Learnt About Love
Sarah Butler · 279 pages
Drawn to dangerous world regions and unconventional careers, Alice, the black sheep of her family, rushes to say goodbye to her dying father; while Daniel, an artist suffering from synesthesia, clings to thoughts of the daughter he has never been able tofind. Alice is the black sheep of her family. She has never enjoyed the closeness with her father that her two older sisters have and is late to
Hikikomori and the Rental Sister
Jeff Backhaus · 246 pages
Estranged from the husband who cloistered himself in his bedroom three years earlier after a devastating tragedy, Silke hires a young Japanese woman to draw him back into the world by establishing a deeply intimate relationship with him.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
J. Ryan Stradal · 312 pages
When Lars Thorvald's wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine -- and a dashing sommelier -- he's left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He's determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter -- starting with puréed pork shoulder. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. From Scandinavian lutefisk to hydroponic chocolate habaneros, each ingredi
At Risk
Alice Hoffman · 272 pages
In a novel the Village Voice calls "memorable" and "striking," Alice Hoffman vividly portrays a family shattered by tragedy when eleven-year-old Amanda is diagnosed with AIDS...
The Leftovers
Tom Perrotta · 355 pages
What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has
The Burgess Boys
Elizabeth Strout · 352 pages
Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.
Empire Falls
Richard Russo · 483 pages
"Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion's widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke o
The Bamboo Stalk
Saud Alsanousi, s`wd lsn`wsy · 377 pages
Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her
We Were the Mulvaneys
Joyce Carol Oates · 464 pages
The Taste of Salt
Martha Southgate · 281 pages
"Josie Henderson is most at home in and around water, and as a senior-level black female scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she is practically alone in her field. But in building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family roots back in Cleveland. When Tick, her brother and childhood ally against their alcoholic father, arrives o
A Widow for One Year
John Irving · 537 pages
The Casual Vacancy
J.K. Rowling · 512 pages
When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is no
When it Happens to You
Molly Ringwald · 272 pages
A collection of interlinked stories that explores the numerous betrayals, big and small, that one grapples with across a lifetime.
The Lightkeeper's Wife
Karen Viggers · 393 pages
A woman at the end of her life. A man unable to restart his. A history of guilty secrets and things left unsaid. A powerful, moving novel that will steal your heart.
City of Refuge
Tom Piazza · 361 pages
In the heat of late summer, two New Orleans families—one black and one white—confront a storm that will change the course of their lives.SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower, lives and works in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community where he was born and raised. His sister, Lucy, is a soulful mess, and SJ has been trying to keep her son, Wesley, out of trouble. Across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwest
Carry the One
Carol Anshaw · 253 pages
When a car of inebriated guests from Carmen's wedding hits and kills a girl on a country road, Carmen and the people involved in the accident connect, disconnect, and reconnect throughout twenty-five subsequent years of marriage, parenthood, holidays, and tragedies.
The Pact
Jodi Picoult · 440 pages
Was it a suicide or was it murder. Inseparable since they were babies, what happened to cause one of them to die?
Belong to Me
Marisa de los Santos · 492 pages
Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others we keep to protect those we love.A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepi