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The Lady Astronaut of Mars

Mary Robinette Kowal · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Good Morning, Midnight

Lily Brooks-Dalton · 264 pages

Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, refuses to abandon the research center in the Arctic when he receives news of a catastrophic event. Soon after, he discovers a mysterious child and realizes that the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone. Meanwhile, Mission Specialist Sullivan and her crew, the first astronauts to delve into deep space, discover that Mission Control is no longer on the

AstronautsElderly ProtagonistBittersweetScience Fiction
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Spaceman of Bohemia

Jaroslav Kalfar · 288 pages

"When Jakub Procha is sent into space to examine a cosmic dust cloud covering Venus, it may be a solo suicide mission. Dreaming of becoming a national hero and desperate to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he leaves his beloved wife behind and launches into the galaxy. But things aboard spaceship JanHus1 quickly turn weird, and, to make matters worse, he soon learns that his wi

AstronautsBittersweetCharacter-DrivenScience Fiction
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The Last Devil to Die

Richard Osman · 369 pages

The fourth installment in the beloved and New York Times bestselling series from Richard Osman, now streaming on Netflix “The best Murder Club book yet. . . A poignant complement to both the fair-play mystery plot and the characters’ lively humor.” —The New York Times Book Review It's rarely a quiet day for the Thursday Murder Club. Shocking news reaches them—an old friend has been killed, and a d

Long IllnessElderly ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Tinkers

Paul Harding · 192 pages

Long IllnessElderly ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes · 152 pages

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse. This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a

Elderly ProtagonistNovellaBittersweetEmotional
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To the Moon and Back

Eliana Ramage · 448 pages

AstronautsBittersweetEmotionalCharacter-Driven
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Elizabeth Is Missing

Emma Healey · 274 pages

"Elizabeth is missing", reads the note in Maud's pocket in her own handwriting. Lately, Maud's been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full, forgets to drink the cups of tea she's made and writes notes to remind herself of things. But Maud is determined to discover what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, and what it has to do with the unsolved disappearanc

Elderly ProtagonistBittersweetEmotionalCharacter-Driven
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My Real Children

Jo Walton · 320 pages

It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know-what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remember

Elderly ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-DrivenEmotional
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Before I Die

Jenny Downham · 332 pages

A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

Long IllnessBittersweetCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway · 127 pages

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.

Elderly ProtagonistBittersweetNovellaEmotional
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I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 207 pages

A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emot

NovellaScience FictionElderly ProtagonistEmotional
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The Notebook

Nicholas Sparks · 266 pages

A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love. A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender sto

Long IllnessElderly ProtagonistBittersweetEmotional
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Planetes, Volume 1

Makoto Yukimura · 235 pages

AstronautsScience FictionCharacter-DrivenEmotional
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One True Thing

Anna Quindlen · 320 pages

A New York psychiatrist recounts her mother's death for which she was arrested. At the time, Dr. Ellen Gulden was accused of killing her mother with an overdose of morphine, a charge in part based on a high school essay in which she advocated euthanasia. By the author of Object Lessons.

Long IllnessBittersweetCharacter-DrivenEmotional
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Quartet in Autumn

Barbara Pym · 218 pages

Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour, Pym conducts us through their small lives and the facade they erect to defend themselves against the outs

Elderly ProtagonistLong IllnessBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Man Plus

Frederik Pohl · 215 pages

From back cover Orb Trade paperback May 2011: **Earth is in crisis.** There simply isn't enough water and arable land to support the burgeoning population. As the threat of nuclear war looms, the United States looks to Mars for the precious resources that could save humanity. But somebody must actually journey to the Red Planet to effect a solution, and it would be far too difficult and cost

AstronautsScience FictionCharacter-DrivenSpace Exploration
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The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Melissa Bank · 274 pages

After following the advice from a manual called "How to Meet and Marry Mr Right", Jane learns that in love there is neither pattern nor promise. This is a funny collection of connected stories and a portrait of Jane, a woman manoeuvring her way through love, sex and relationships.

Long IllnessBittersweetCharacter-DrivenEmotional
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Atmosphere: A Love Story

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 352 pages

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the f

AstronautsCharacter-DrivenEmotionalFemale Lead
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All the Little Live Things

Wallace Stegner · 345 pages

An Eastern couple retire to California in search of peace after the death of their wayward son, only to have their paradise shattered by painful reminders of the past.

Elderly ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-DrivenEmotional
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In the Ocean of Night

Gregory Benford · 333 pages

From the back cover Warner paperback February 2004: 2019: NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy the comet, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe -- a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal... 2034: Then a reply is heard. Searching f

AstronautsScience FictionCharacter-DrivenSpace Exploration
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Dicey's Song

Cynthia Voigt · 256 pages

When Momma abandoned Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings in a mall parking lot and was later traced to an asylum where she lay unrecognizing, unknowing, she left her four children no choice but to get on by themselves. They set off alone on foot over hundreds of miles until they finally found someone to take them in. Grams rundown farm isnt perfect, but they can stay together as a family which

Long IllnessBittersweetEmotionalCharacter-Driven
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The Wanderers

Meg Howrey · 370 pages

"Station Eleven meets The Martian in this brilliantly inventive novel about three astronauts training for the first-ever mission to Mars, an experience that will push the boundary between real and unreal, test their relationships, and leave each of them--and their families--changed forever In an age of space exploration, we search to find ourselves. In four years Prime Space will put the first hum

AstronautsCharacter-DrivenScience FictionSpace Exploration
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The Age of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker · 304 pages

The coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.

BittersweetScience FictionEmotionalCharacter-Driven
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Remanence

Jennifer Foehner Wells · 450 pages

AstronautsScience FictionWomen in STEMFemale Lead

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