What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorWelcome to Our Hillbrow: A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa
Phaswane Mpe · 124 pages
"Welcome to Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbing ride through the chaotic and hyper-real zone of Hillbrow--microcosm of all that is contradictory, alluring, and painful in the postapartheid South African psyche. Everything is there: the shattered dreams of youth, sexuality and its unpredictable costs, AIDS, xenophobia, suicide, the omnipotent violence that often cuts short the promise of
The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes · 152 pages
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse. This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a
Human Acts
Han Kang · 221 pages
In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end to an editor struggling against censorship; to a pri
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara · 736 pages
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami · 400 pages
As his plane lands at a European airport, thirty-seven-year-old Toru Watanabe casually hears an old Beatles song. Suddenly, the music transports him back to his youth, to the turbulent Tokyo of the late sixties. He then remembers, with melancholy and unease, the unstable and mysterious Naoko, the girlfriend of his best—and only—friend from adolescence, Kizuki, and how Kizuki's suicide distanced th
The Pact
Jodi Picoult · 440 pages
Was it a suicide or was it murder. Inseparable since they were babies, what happened to cause one of them to die?
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong · 256 pages
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once
The Changeling
Kenzaburo Oe · 468 pages
Late in his life, writer Kogito Choko reconnects with his estranged friend, the filmmaker Goro Hanawa. Goro's subsequent suicide causes Kogito to examine and reexamine Goro's life for clues that will lead him to understand his friend's path.
Girl in Pieces
Kathleen Glasgow · 416 pages
Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At 17 she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don't have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie's heart just a lit
Now You See Him
Eli Gottlieb · 274 pages
When his best friend from childhood murders his girlfriend and then commits suicide, Nick Framingham reevaluates his own life through his memories of their friendship and realizes unsettling truths about himself and their suburban New York community.
If Only I Had Told Her
Laura Nowlin · 300 pages
Autumn surrounds herself with books and wants to write her own destiny—but one doesn't always get a new chapter and fate can be cruel to those in love. Told through three different perspectives, If Only I Had Told Her is a love story brimming with truth, tragedy, and the unexpected bonds that heal us.
The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend
Sarah Manguso · 111 pages
Undone
Cat Clarke · 352 pages
After the suicide of her gay best friend Kai, Jem Halliday reads letters he left her encouraging her to come out of her shell and Jem does just that, but only to infiltrate the group of popular students who released a video that "outed" Kai so that she can take revenge.
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
All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven · 408 pages
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death. When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at s
The Casual Vacancy
J.K. Rowling · 512 pages
When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is no
More Than This
Patrick Ness · 480 pages
A boy called Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he is here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unt
Hold Still
Nina LaCour · 272 pages
An arresting story about starting over after a friend's suicide, froma breakthrough new voice in YA fictiondear caitlin, there are so many things that i want so badly to tell you but i just can't.Devastating, hopeful, hopeless, playful...in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin. Now Caitlin is left alone, by loss and by choice, struggling to find
The Yellow Birds
Kevin Powers · 240 pages
In this haunting fictional account, an Iraq war veteran contemplates the lives, including his own, devasated by the random violence of war.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 236 pages
This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the s
Orange: The Complete Collection, Vol. 2
Ichigo Takano
This critically-lauded manga series will tug at your heartstrings with its central plot device about time travel and communication with a future self.