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The Smell of Apples

Mark Behr · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorRacismSexual Assault Content
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Beasts of No Nation

Uzodinma Iweala · 180 pages

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the con

Child NarratorLoss of InnocenceSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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The Notebook

Agota Kristof · 160 pages

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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

Loss of InnocenceRacismChild NarratorSexual Assault Content
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Room

Emma Donoghue · 322 pages

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world.... Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At n

Child NarratorLoss of InnocenceSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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The Painted Bird

Jerzy Kosinski · 251 pages

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Closed Doors

Lisa O'Donnell · 249 pages

"[A] young boy on a small Scottish island, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, discovers that a secret can be a dangerous thing. Eleven-year-old Michael Murray is the best at two things: hacky sack and keeping secrets. His family thinks he's too young to hear grown-up stuff, but he listens at doors--it's the only way to find out anything. And Michael's heard a secret, one that may

Child NarratorLoss of InnocenceSexual Assault ContentFirst Person Narrator
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorRacismFirst Person Narrator
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The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros · 110 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for he

Child NarratorLoss of InnocenceSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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Montana 1948

Larry Watson · 175 pages

Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorRacismLiterary Fiction
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The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Loss of InnocenceRacismLiterary FictionSexual Assault Content
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The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold · 368 pages

This deluxe trade paperback edition of Alice Sebold's modern classic features French flaps and rough-cut pages.Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such a book - a phenomenal #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its narrative artistry, its luminous clarity of emotion, and its astoniishing p

Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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Blu's Hanging

Lois-Ann Yamanaka · 261 pages

Child NarratorSexual Assault ContentLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Fifth Born

Zelda Lockhart · 210 pages

**Fifth Born** When Odessa Blackburn is three years old, she sees her grandmother for the last time, and so begins her story as the fifth born of eight children in a troubled family. Molested by her father, Odessa is also the sole witness to a murder he commits. Her mother guards both secrets and joins her husband in ostracizing their fifth born from the rest of her siblings. As Odessa grows,

Child NarratorSexual Assault ContentRacismLiterary Fiction
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A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Child NarratorLoss of InnocenceRacismLiterary Fiction
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Leaving Atlanta

Tayari Jones · 263 pages

"It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981. Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world thei

Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorRacismLiterary Fiction
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My Sweet Orange Tree

Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos · 232 pages

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The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy · 336 pages

The God of Small Things is the debut novel of Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much." The book explores how the small things affect people's behavior and their lives. The book also reflects its irony against casteism, which is a major discri

Loss of InnocenceRacismSexual Assault ContentLiterary Fiction
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The Tin Drum

Gunter Grass · 591 pages

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Friedrich

Hans Peter Richter

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La fruta del borrachero

Ingrid Rojas Contreras · 406 pages

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The Book of Aron

Jim Shepard · 272 pages

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar young boy whose family is driven from the countryside into the Warsaw Ghetto. As his family is slowly stripped away from him, Aron and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives, smuggling and trading things through the "quarantine walls" to keep their people alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police (not t

Loss of InnocenceChild NarratorLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Carry Me Down

M.J. Hyland · 326 pages

John Egan has a gift. He can tell when people are lying. Hoping that his talent will bring him fame, he has written to the Guinness Book of Records. But while he waits for a letter in return, his obsession with uncovering the truth begins to threaten his already fragile family.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain · 330 pages

Child NarratorRacismLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator

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