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The Elsewhere Express

Samantha Sotto Yambao · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Brian Selznick · 534 pages

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen

TrainsFinding PurposeHopefulWhimsical
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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Kate DiCamillo · 228 pages

Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost...Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustl

HopefulMagical RealismWhimsicalGrief and Mourning
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By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Paulo Coelho · 210 pages

"The story of a young Spanish woman, Pilar, and her encounter with her lost love, an unnamed spiritual seeker who comes to worship the feminine face of God. Clarke's translation is, as usual, somewhat hurried and condensed as if he's impatient with Coelho's admittedly belabored and self-consciously poetical style"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Finding PurposeMagical RealismHopefulBittersweet
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Other Birds

Sarah Addison Allen · 320 pages

Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits-a stunning old cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe, and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother

WhimsicalGrief and MourningHopefulAtmospheric
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The Little Paris Bookshop

Nina George · 392 pages

“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.” Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floa

HopefulGrief and MourningMagical RealismWhimsical
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami · 336 pages

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine', and Oumi, 'blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, 'white root', and Kurono, 'black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki's friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, eve

TrainsGrief and MourningMagical RealismBittersweet
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A Monster Calls

Patrick Ness · 224 pages

A brilliant, graphic novel written by young but promising Patrick Ness. This is the story about 13 year old Conor and his mother who is dying of cancer. Conor has to face the cruelty of real life and learn to let his close and dearest go. When no human can help him Monster appears...

Magical RealismGrief and MourningLyrical ProseAtmospheric
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The Snow Child

Eowyn Ivey · 389 pages

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-hai

Magical RealismBittersweetLyrical ProseAtmospheric
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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender · 345 pages

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in t

Magical RealismBittersweetAtmosphericWhimsical
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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

Finding PurposeHopefulGrief and MourningBittersweet
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The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Kelly Barnhill · 388 pages

An epic fantasy about a young girl raised by a witch, a swamp monster, and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, who must unlock the powerful magic buried deep inside her.

Grief and MourningHopefulWhimsicalBittersweet
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The Polar Express

Chris Van Allsburg · 32 pages

TrainsHopefulWhimsicalMagical Realism
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When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · 256 pages

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve me

Finding PurposeGrief and MourningHopefulLyrical Prose
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My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

Fredrik Backman · 392 pages

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attac

HopefulGrief and MourningWhimsicalMagical Realism
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Gather

Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages

Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

Finding PurposeHopefulBittersweetGrief and Mourning
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Finding PurposeGrief and MourningMagical RealismBittersweet
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Night Train to the Stars

Kenji Miyazawa · 184 pages

TrainsMagical RealismLyrical ProseBittersweet
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Leslye Walton · 301 pages

Born with bird wings into a family cursed to be foolish in love, sixteen-year-old Ava delves into her family's past hoping to understand her unusual nature and learn to fit in with her peers, but she is ill-prepared for what she discovers. Born with the wings of a bird and eager to be accepted by her peers, 16-year old Ava ventures into the world, ill-prepared for what she discovers and naive to

Magical RealismBittersweetGrief and MourningAtmospheric
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The Tempest

William Shakespeare · 144 pages

HopefulWhimsicalBittersweetLyrical Prose
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Daytripper

Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba · 247 pages

Presents key moments in the life of Brás de Oliva Domingos, a Brazilian writer and sometime journalist, and the son of a prominent author, as if each episode would turn out to be the day in which he was about to die.

Finding PurposeMagical RealismGrief and MourningLyrical Prose
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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Grace Lin · 282 pages

In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her

Finding PurposeHopefulWhimsicalLyrical Prose
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom · 196 pages

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a 2003 novel by Mitch Albom. It follows the life and death of a ride mechanic named Eddie who is killed in an amusement park accident and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. It was published by Hyperion and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

Finding PurposeHopefulGrief and MourningBittersweet
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The Little Prince & Letter to a Hostage

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Finding PurposeHopefulWhimsicalLyrical Prose
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The Scorpio Races

Maggie Stiefvater · 435 pages

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die. At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them. Puck Connolly is different. She

Finding PurposeMagical RealismBittersweetLyrical Prose
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