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🧲 Books like this

Mary Coin

Marisa Silver · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Long Bright River

Liz Moore · 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 ?

Dual TimelineWorking-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherCharacter-Driven
❤️

The Street Sweeper

Elliot Perlman · 626 pages

"From the author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, an epic that reaches across generations and spans continents, revealing the interconnectedness and interdependence of humanity and the profound impact of memory on our lives"--

Dual TimelineWorking-Class ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
❤️

The Fortunate Pilgrim

Mario Puzo · 301 pages

Lucia Santa has traveled three thousand miles of dark ocean, from the mountain farms of Italy to the streets of New York, hoping for a better life. Instead, she finds herself in Hell's Kitchen, in a bad marriage, raising six children on her own. As Lucia struggles to hold her family together, her daughter confronts the adult world of work and romance while her eldest son is drawn into the mafia. M

Single MotherWorking-Class ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
❤️

Jewel

Bret Lott · 368 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
❤️

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison · 309 pages

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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In 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

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy · 457 pages

An intimate portrait of a woman, one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines...Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne'er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d'Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin—a jour

Single MotherWorking-Class ProtagonistLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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Pigs in Heaven

Barbara Kingsolver · 363 pages

A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees.

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Lisa See · 371 pages

The story of a Chinese mother and her daughter, who has been adopted by an American couple, tracing the very different cultural factors that compel them to consume a rare native tea that has shaped their family's destiny for generations.

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionMultiple POV
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Malas

Marcela Fuentes · 375 pages

Dual TimelineLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMultiple POV
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The Perfume Collector

Kathleen Tessaro · 456 pages

Newlywed Grace Monroe doesn't fit anyone's expectations of a successful 1950s London socialite, least of all her own. When she receives an unexpected inheritance from a complete stranger, Madame Eva d'Orsey, Grace is drawn to uncover the identity of her mysterious benefactor. Weaving through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London, the story Grace uncovers is that of an

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenMultiple POVHistorical Fiction
🙂

The Help

Kathryn Stockett · 464 pages

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women: Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherHistorical FictionCharacter-Driven
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The Seven Daughters of Dupree

Nikesha Elise Williams · 336 pages

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionMultiple POV
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Black Cake

Charmaine Wilkerson · 385 pages

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionMultiple POV
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The Valley of Amazement

Amy Tan · 589 pages

Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her.

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionMultiple POV
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The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton · 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

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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The Weight of Ink

Rachel Kadish · 576 pages

Dual TimelineHistorical FictionMultiple POVLiterary Fiction
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith · 443 pages

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchant

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherCharacter-DrivenHistorical Fiction
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Longbourn

Jo Baker · 331 pages

A novel whose principal characters are the servants in Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly real

Working-Class ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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The Fair Fight

Anna Freeman · 448 pages

"A debut historical novel set within the world of female pugilists and their patrons in late eighteenth century Bristol"--

Working-Class ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionMultiple POV
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Secrets of a Charmed Life

Susan Meissner · 480 pages

"When Oxford student Kendra Van Zant interviews 93-year-old artist Isabel MacFarland about her experience as a survivor of the London Blitz, Isabel is ready to share secrets she has kept for decades--beginning with who she really is"--

Dual TimelineCharacter-DrivenHistorical FictionMultiple POV
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Afterimage

Helen Humphreys · 243 pages

"When Annie Phelan arrives at the Dashell farm to begin work as a maid, she finds her new mistress strapping turkey wings on a naked boy who is to play the Angel of Death. Annie knows one thing for sure - she's not at the prim Mrs. Gilbey's anymore.". "England in 1865 is aswirl with change. This is the age of invention, the Crystal Palace, progress, and the colonies. At the farm, the master, Eldo

Working-Class ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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One Plus One

Jojo Moyes · 594 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistSingle MotherCharacter-DrivenMultiple POV

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