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The Blue Notebook

James A. Levine · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave

Sibel Hodge · 94 pages

Human TraffickingDiary FormatSexual Assault ContentBleak
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The Color of our Sky

Amita Trasi · 412 pages

1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old girl from the lower caste Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes has come of age to fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. In an attempt to escape this legacy that binds her, Mukta is transported to a foster family in Bombay. There she discovers a friend in the high spirited eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family, who helps her recover from

Human TraffickingIndiaSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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Sold

Patricia McCormick · 272 pages

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather

Human TraffickingSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
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A Walk Across the Sun

Corban Addison · 518 pages

When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. As they struggle to reach the safe haven of the convent where they attend school, they are abducted by human traffickers and thrust into a hidden world of sexual violence and illicit commerce, where the most valuable prize is the innocence of a child. Ha

Human TraffickingIndiaSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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Say You're One of Them

Uwem Akpan · 384 pages

This collection of five stories set in various African countries reveals the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.

Human TraffickingChild NarratorBleakEmotional
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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

TearjerkerSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
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Tricks

Ellen Hopkins · 627 pages

Five teenagers find themselves stuck in a horrifying wold of sexual slavery

Human TraffickingBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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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.

Child NarratorSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
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Parable of the Talents

Octavia E. Butler · 420 pages

Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity. Taking advantage of the situation, a zealous bigot wins his way into the White House. Lauren Olamina leads a new faith group directly opposed to the new government. This is the story of the group's struggle to preserve its vision. As the government turns a blind eye to the violent bigots who consider a bl

Diary FormatBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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The Education of Dixie Dupree

Donna Everhart · 352 pages

Child NarratorSexual Assault ContentDiary FormatEmotional
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The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison · 181 pages

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her. When someone finally did, it was her fath

Sexual Assault ContentBleakChild NarratorEmotional
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More

Hakan Gunday · 398 pages

"The award-winning More, by one of Turkey's leading underground writers, is the world's first novel about the refugee crisis. "The illegals climbed into the truck, and, after a journey of two hundred miles, they boarded ships and were lost in the night." Gaza lives on the shores of the Aegean Sea. At the age of nine he becomes a human trafficker, like his father. Together with his father and local

Human TraffickingChild NarratorBleakLiterary Fiction
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Human TraffickingIndiaSexual Assault ContentFemale Lead
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Becoming Abigail

Chris Abani · 120 pages

Human TraffickingBleakSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 258 pages

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior

BleakSexual Assault ContentWriter ProtagonistEmotional
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The Parcel

Anosh Irani · 304 pages

"The Parcel's astonishing heart, soul and unforgettable voice is Madhu--born a boy, but a eunuch by choice--who has spent most of her life in a close-knit clan of transgender sex workers in Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Bombay. Madhu identifies herself as a "hijra"--a person belonging to the third sex, neither here nor there, man nor woman. Now, at 40, she has moved away from pr

Human TraffickingIndiaSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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Go Ask Alice

Anonymous · 185 pages

You Can't Ask Alice Anything Anymore But you can do something. Read her diary. Strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid. The actual story of a desperate girl on drugs and on the run who almost made it. --back cover

Diary FormatBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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Little Peach

Peggy Kern · 190 pages

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: she is alone and out of options. Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place fo

Human TraffickingSexual Assault ContentBleakFemale Lead
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A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry · 713 pages

A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's eagerly awaited second novel and follows his critically acclaimed Such a Long Journey, the book that won three prestigious literary awards in 1991. Set in India in the mid-1970s, A Fine Balance is a richly textured novel which sweeps the reader up into its special world. Large in scope, the narrative focuses on four unlikely people who come together in a flat

IndiaBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · 736 pages

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A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini · 416 pages

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an

BleakTearjerkerSexual Assault ContentEmotional
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Singing Songs

Meg Tilly · 252 pages

Child abuse from the perspective of the child. When Anna, the narrator, is five years old, her mother marries a drunkard who takes a fancy to her daughters, repeatedly raping one. The mother turns a blind eye.

Child NarratorSexual Assault ContentBleakLiterary Fiction
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Secret Daughter

Shilpi Somaya Gowda · 352 pages

On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son.Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to a

IndiaTearjerkerEmotionalLiterary Fiction
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Thirteen Reasons Why

Jay Asher · 288 pages

Clay Jenkins returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier.On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.Through

TearjerkerBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional

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