What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorA God in Ruins
Kate Atkinson · 468 pages
Ursula Todd's brother Teddy is an old man trying to come to grips with his post-War life and with a modern world and family. Switching back and forth in time between memories of his childhood and his present, Teddy is an oblivious husband, a rueful father. He never quite got over the War and part of him never adjusted to having a future. Would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfathe
The Witch's Kind
Louisa Morgan · 440 pages
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem
Sarit Yishai-Levi · 379 pages
"The #1 International Best Seller! The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is a dazzling novel of mothers and daughters, stories told and untold, and the ties that bind four generations of women. Gabriela's mother Luna is the most beautiful woman in all of Jerusalem, though her famed beauty and charm seem to be reserved for everyone but her daughter. Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have strug
The Gustav Sonata
Rose Tremain · 272 pages
Growing up sheltered from the echoes of World War II, Gustav forges an intense relationship with a mercurial Jewish boy, Anton, a talented pianist who introduces him to the harsh realities of racism, tolerance, and cruelty during a friendship spanning half a century.
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
Fannie Flagg · 368 pages
"Spanning decades, generations, and America in the 1940s and today, The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion is a fun-loving mystery about an Alabama woman today, and five women who in 1943 worked in a Phillips 66 gas station, during the WWII years. Like Fannie Flagg's classic Fried Green Tomatoes, this is a riveting, fun story of two families, set in present day America and during World War II
Beyond That, the Sea
Laura Spence-Ash · 351 pages
The Island
Victoria Hislop · 474 pages
The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka. Just off the coast is the tiny island of Spinalonga, where the nation's leper colony once was located—a place that has haunted four generations of Petrakis women. There's Eleni, ripped from her husband and two young daughters and sent to Spinalonga in 1939, and her daughters Maria, finding joy in the everyday as she dutifully c
The Storm Sister
Lucinda Riley · 512 pages
The Tin Flute
Gabrielle Roy · 393 pages
A family in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal struggles to overcome poverty and ignorance while searching for love.
All Our Worldly Goods
Irene Nemirovsky · 246 pages
Reads like prequel to Suite Francaise, but is a perfect novel in its own right - a gripping story of family life, of money and love, set against the backdrop of France in two terrible world wars.In haunting ways this wonderful, compelling novel prefigures Suite Francaise and some of the themes of Nemirovsky's great unfinished sequence of novels. All Our Worldly Goods, though, is complete, and exqu
The Shell Seekers
Rosamunde Pilcher · 582 pages
The Shell Seekers is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The Shell Seekers is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husband and lovers--inspired with real values. The Shell Seekers centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in world you'll never forget. The Shell Seekers is a magical
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Gail Tsukiyama · 432 pages
It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks. But as the ripples of war spread to their quiet neighborhood, the brothers must put their dreams on hold--and for
Keeping the House
Ellen Baker
Palisades Park
Alan Brennert · 421 pages
Sharing a family life in the 1930s near the legendary Palisades Amusement Park, a family of dreamers explores ambitions and cultural boundaries that are challenged by the realities of the Great Depression, multiple wars, and the park's eventual closing in 1971.
The Calligrapher's Daughter
Eugenia Kim · 386 pages
A richly drawn novel about a country torn between ancient customs and modern possibilities, a family ultimately united by love and a woman who never gives up her search for freedom.
A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Love Stories
Sebastian Faulks · 304 pages
"Throughout this novel of love and war, lore and music, missed opportunities and timeless bonds ... characters risk their bodies, hearts, and minds in pursuit of the manna of human connection"--Dust jacket flap.
The Road from Gap Creek
Robert Morgan · 318 pages
Seen through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Annie, the Richards family faces triumph and hardships during the Great Depression and World War II.
Rich Man, Poor Man
Irwin Shaw · 666 pages
A novel of two brothers from the end of World War II to the 1960's. The story of Rudolph, Gretchen, and Thomas Jordache, children of an embittered German immigrant. Nurtured on traditional views of American success, each pursues the illusion of happiness in his own way, determined to achieve his "birthright."
The Facts of Life
Graham Joyce · 304 pages
Life: An Exploded Diagram
Mal Peet · 400 pages
In 1960s Norfolk, England, seventeen-year-old Clem Ackroyd lives with his mother and grandmother in a tiny cottage, but his life is transformed when he falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy farmer in this tale that flashes back through the stories of three generations.
The Distant Land of My Father
Bo Caldwell · 373 pages
Anna, the narrator of this riveting first novel, lives in a storybook world: exotic pre- World War II Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries, leads a charmed and secretive life, though his greatest joy is sharing his beloved city with his only daughter. Yet when Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, he
Requiem
Frances Itani · 317 pages
During World War II, Canada interned citizens of Japanese descent, just as the United States did. Here, Itani recaptures history through fiction by imagining the story of young Bin Okuma and his family, who were transported from their British Columbia home to a desolate area 100 miles from the "Protected Zone" and only grudgingly given access to food, plumbing, and electricity. Fifty years later,
The House at the Edge of Night
Catherine Banner · 456 pages
Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten, but not far enough to escape from the world's troubles. At the center of the island's life is a café draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where the community gathers to gossip and talk. Amedeo Esposito, a foundling from Florence, finds his destiny on the island with his beautiful wife, Pina, wh