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The Magician's Lie

Greer Macallister · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Water for Elephants

Sara Gruen · 352 pages

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there

Traveling CircusFrame StoryDomestic AbuseHistorical Fiction
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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 400 pages

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of w

Frame StoryDomestic AbuseHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Steadfast

Mercedes Lackey

Traveling CircusDomestic AbuseHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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The Nature of Fragile Things

Susan Meissner · 367 pages

Domestic AbuseFrame StoryHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

Domestic AbuseFrame StoryHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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City of Thieves

David Benioff · 286 pages

From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime. During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives b

Frame StoryTense and SuspensefulHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston · 231 pages

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is a classic Harlem Renaissance novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. The novel follows Janie Crawford as she recounts the story of her life as she journeys from a naive teenager to a woman in control of her destiny.

Frame StoryDomestic AbuseFemale LeadHistorical Fiction
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne Bronte · 416 pages

**Librarian note: Alternate cover editions for this ISBN are: "Woman in white dress" (with the title on white and black background), "Woman at the easel" on a black and blue background, and "Furniture, easel and window".** ***Anne Brontë's second novel is a passionate and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society and reflected in circulating-library fiction.

Frame StoryDomestic AbuseHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Little Stars

Jacqueline Wilson · 512 pages

Hetty Feather has begun a new chapter in her life story. Escaping from Tanglefield’s Travelling Circus with her dearest friend Diamond, Hetty is determined to find them positions as glamorous music hall artistes. Hetty and Diamond quickly become the Little Stars of Mrs Ruby’s show, alongside many colourful acts – including an old friend from Hetty’s past, Flirty Bertie. But the Cavalcade proves

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

Robert Hough · 430 pages

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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Airs Above the Ground

Mary Stewart · 256 pages

Lovely Vanessa March, two years married and very much in love, did not think it was a strange for her husband to take a business trip to Stockholm. What was strange was the silence that followed. She never thought to look for her missing husband in Vienna -- until she saw him in a newsreel shot there at the scene of a deadly fire. Then she caught a glimpse of him in a newsreel shot of a crowd near

Traveling CircusTense and SuspensefulFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

Melanie Benjamin · 424 pages

Mid-nineteenth-century little person Mercy Levinia Warren Bump comes of age in the antebellum south before being invited to join the P. T. Barnum circus, through which she meets her future husband, General Tom Thumb, and pursues limitless international opportunities.

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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World of Wonders

Robertson Davies · 358 pages

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Mudbound

Hillary Jordan · 335 pages

"It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm; a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not; charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eld

Domestic AbuseTense and SuspensefulHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The True Memoirs of Little K

Adrienne Sharp · 389 pages

"Exiled in Paris, tiny, one-hundred-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska sits down to write her memoirs before all that she believes to be true is forgotten. A lifetime ago, she was the vain, ambitious, impossibly charming prima ballerina assoluta of the tsar's Russian Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. Now, as she looks back on her tumultuous life, she can still recall every slight she ever suffered, e

Frame StoryHistorical FictionFirst Person NarratorArtist Protagonist
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I Let You Go

Clare Mackintosh · 384 pages

Devastated by a hit-and-run accident that has ended the life of her young son, Jenna moves to the remote Welsh coast to search for healing while two dedicated policemen try to get to the bottom of the case.

Domestic AbuseTense and SuspensefulFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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Beholding Bee

Kimberly Newton Fusco · 336 pages

In 1942, when life turns sour at the carnival that has always been her home, eleven-year-old Bee takes her dog, Peabody, and piglet, Cordelia, and sets out to find a real home, aided by two women only Bee and her pets can see.

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFemale LeadMagical Realism
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Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë · 418 pages

Emily Bronte's dark romance, with an introduction from best-selling author Alice Hoffman Heathcliff comes to the brooding mansion of Wuthering Heighths as an orphan child. Cathy is the daughter of the wealthy family that takes him in. They are drawn together from the moment they meet, their love consuming, destructive, and full of desire. They cannot be together, and yet they cannot stay apart. Th

Domestic AbuseFrame StoryHistorical Fiction
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The Palace of Curiosities

Rosie Garland · 352 pages

"Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps... and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn't cry - she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, and the mudlarks search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But, how has h

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFemale LeadMagical Realism
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Nothing to Lose

Alex Flinn · 277 pages

A year after running away with a traveling carnival to escape his unbearable home life, sixteen-year-old Michael returns to Miami, Florida, to find that his mother is going on trial for the murder of his abusive stepfather.

Traveling CircusDomestic Abuse
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Truly, Madly, Deadly

Hannah Jayne · 283 pages

When her abusive boyfriend dies in what seems to be a drunk-driving accident, Sawyer is secretly relieved until she opens her locker and finds a note from a secret admirer that says "You're welcome." When her abusive boyfriend dies in what seems to be a drunk-driving accident, Sawyer opens her locker and finds a note from a secret admirer. The plot contains profanity, lewd sexual situations, and

Domestic AbuseTense and SuspensefulFirst Person NarratorFemale Lead
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Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty · 482 pages

Pirriwee Public is a beautiful little beachside primary school where children are taught that ‘sharing is caring.’ So how has the annual School Trivia Night ended in full-blown riot? Sirens are wailing. People are screaming. The principal is mortified. And one parent is dead. Was it a murder, a tragic accident or just good parents gone bad? As the parents at Pirriwee Public are about to discover

Frame StoryDomestic AbuseTense and Suspenseful
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Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show

Frank Delaney · 427 pages

Traveling CircusHistorical FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Twilight Eyes

Dean Koontz · 471 pages

Sought by police for murder, slim Mackenzie, a young man both blessed and cursed by "twilight eyes," stalks the diabolical "Others," who feed their twisted needs with human suffering.

Traveling CircusTense and SuspensefulFirst Person Narrator

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