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The Nobodies Album

Carolyn Parkhurst Β· back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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My Name Is Lucy Barton

Elizabeth Strout Β· 200 pages

"Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her and a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter"--

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsFirst Person Narrator
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Sharp Objects

Gillian Flynn Β· 297 pages

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker's troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille's first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her legSince she left town eight years a

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorFamily Secrets
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon Β· 240 pages

This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery st

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsFirst Person Narrator
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The Ghostwriter

Julie Clark Β· 328 pages

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsMystery
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Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

Benjamin Stevenson Β· 384 pages

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsFirst Person Narrator
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Long Bright River

Liz Moore Β· 473 pages

A female cop begins to fear for her addicted sister. A serial murder is targeting homeless female prostitutes. Can Mickey find her sister before the killer does ?

Estranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield Β· 424 pages

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.

Writer ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorLiterary FictionFamily Secrets
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Homecoming

Kate Morton Β· 547 pages

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsLiterary Fiction
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The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls Β· 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

Estranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Joe

Jonathan Tropper Β· 338 pages

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Color Purple

Alice Walker Β· 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

Estranged FamilyMusicianFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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Commonwealth

Ann Patchett Β· 322 pages

"One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsLiterary Fiction
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Other Desert Cities

Jon Robin Baitz Β· 65 pages

"A play about a family coming to terms with long held secrets. When a once-promising novelist returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents conflict ensues after she announces the imminent publication of her memoir -- a book that focuses on the politically explosive and tragic death of her antiwar-activist brother. With her parents trying to cling to their Reaganesque social status, the family

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsLiterary Fiction
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Girls in the Moon

Janet McNally Β· 353 pages

Tired of the half-truths surrounding her famous family's past, Phoebe visits her indie-rock darling sister Luna to see how she fits into a family of storytellers.

Estranged FamilyMusicianFamily SecretsFirst Person Narrator
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The Nix

Nathan Hill Β· 640 pages

"An epic novel about a son, the mother who left him as a child, and how his search to uncover the secrets of her life leads him to reclaim his own"--

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsLiterary Fiction
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The Lola Quartet

Emily St. John Mandel Β· 279 pages

Gavin Sasaki's a promising young journalist in New York City, until he's fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It's early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly: the economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants

MusicianWriter ProtagonistFamily SecretsLiterary Fiction
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Faith

Jennifer Haigh Β· 318 pages

Sheila McGann is estranged from her complicated family. But when her older brother Art, pastor of a large suburban parish, finds himself at the center of a scandal, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him. Her strict mother lives in a state of angry denial; her younger brother Mike has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently

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Erasure

Percival Everett Β· 278 pages

Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he

Writer ProtagonistEstranged FamilyFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton Β· 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

Estranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Lace Reader

Brunonia Barry Β· 390 pages

The Lace Reader (2006) is a novel by Brunonia Barry. The novel is set in Salem, Massachusetts, the American town famous for the Salem witch trials. A crucial plot device is the Ipswich lace that the protagonist's family would make. The novel came to be well known for its unusual route to mainstream publishing. Originally self-published by the author it became a local success story, got rave rev

Estranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person NarratorMystery
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler Β· 336 pages

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . I loved her as a sister."

Estranged FamilyFirst Person NarratorLiterary FictionFamily Secrets
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No Place to Fall

Jaye Robin Brown Β· 369 pages

Sixteen-year-old Amber Vaughn dreams of attending the North Carolina School of the Arts to gain confidence in using her amazing singing voice, but her family is falling apart and she is torn between two boys.

MusicianEstranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person Narrator
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The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan Β· 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

Estranged FamilyFamily SecretsFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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The Barrowfields

Phillip Lewis Β· 400 pages

"Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father -- outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow -- reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writing desk of this fiercely brilliant man. But when tragedy tips his father toward

Estranged FamilyWriter ProtagonistLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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