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A Death in the Family

James Agee · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer · 326 pages

A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tendern

Sudden LossDeath of a ParentGrief and MourningChild Narrator
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The Pilot's Wife

Anita Shreve · 304 pages

Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to

Sudden LossGrief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningTragic
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They Came Like Swallows

William Maxwell · 174 pages

First published in 1937, They Came LIKE Swallows was William Maxwell's second novel. It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison--called Bunny; of his older brother, Rob

Death of a ParentChild NarratorGrief and MourningTragic
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The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri · 304 pages

"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, c

Sudden LossDeath of a ParentGrief and MourningBittersweet
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As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner · 250 pages

Written in stream-of-consciousness style with multiple narrators, the story follows a journey wherein the family of a dead woman try to transport her body to her birthplace in Mississippi in accordance with her wishes. When a ford across a river is flooded they are forced to take a roundabout route and it becomes a desperate race to complete their mission before the body begins to decompose.

Death of a ParentGrief and MourningTragicChild Narrator
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Daytripper

Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba · 247 pages

Presents key moments in the life of Brás de Oliva Domingos, a Brazilian writer and sometime journalist, and the son of a prominent author, as if each episode would turn out to be the day in which he was about to die.

Grief and MourningDeath of a ParentBittersweetTragic
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A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving · 543 pages

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." So begins John Irving's new novel. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Li

Death of a ParentBittersweetTragicReligious Identity
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Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse · 235 pages

"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh

Death of a ParentGrief and MourningLyrical ProseTragic
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Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Max Porter · 121 pages

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer

Grief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningLyrical ProseBittersweet
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The Tiger's Wife

Tea Obreht · 360 pages

Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the ti

Grief and MourningDeath of a ParentLyrical ProseTragic
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The Optimist's Daughter

Eudora Welty · 180 pages

The Optimist's Daughter is the story of Laurel, a widow who returns to Mississippi when her father is ill and witnesses his death and funeral. From there, she embarks on a deeply personal journey to explore her past and her family in order to make sense of her future.

Death of a ParentGrief and MourningBittersweetLyrical Prose
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Beloved

Toni Morrison · 288 pages

Toni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the unassailable truths of experience and emotion with the vision of legend and imagination. It is the story--set in post-Civil War Ohio--of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked death in

Grief and MourningLyrical ProseTragicEmotional
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Hidden

Catherine McKenzie · 355 pages

When Jeff Manning is struck and killed in a car accident walking home the two women in his life are devastated: his wife, Claire and his co-worker, Trish. Both have to learn to deal with their grief in different ways.

Sudden LossGrief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningBittersweet
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A Single Man

Christopher Isherwood · 158 pages

Classic fiction. The best prose writer in English' Gore Vidal Celebrated as a masterpiece from its first publication, A Single Man is the story of George Falconer, an English professor in suburban California left heartbroken after the death of his lover Jim. With devastating clarity and humour, Christopher Isherwood shows George's determination to carry on, evoking the unexpected pleasures of life

Grief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningBittersweetClassics
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Rabbit Cake

Annie Hartnett · 367 pages

Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn't yet

Death of a ParentGrief and MourningChild NarratorBittersweet
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The Sea

John Banville · 233 pages

Following the death of his wife, Max Morden retreats to the seaside town of his childhood summers, where his own life becomes inextricably entwined with the members of the vacationing Grace family.

Grief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningLyrical ProseBittersweet
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Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger · 208 pages

First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.

Child NarratorBittersweetTragicLiterary Fiction
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The Book Thief

Markus Zusak · 566 pages

The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestselling story about the ability of books to feed the soul is now a major motion picture. This enhanced ebook edition is perfect for new fans and collectors alike. It includes: · An exclusive video welcome to the enhanced edition from Markus Zusak. · The official movie trailer for The Book Thief. · Videos featurettes introducing Sophie Nélisse (Leisel Mem

Grief and MourningTragicLyrical ProseDeath of a Parent
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The Usual Rules

Joyce Maynard · 400 pages

"It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn - a perfect September day. Wendy's heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the ne

Sudden LossDeath of a ParentGrief and MourningBittersweet
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The Hours

Michael Cunningham

Grief and MourningLyrical ProseTragicBittersweet
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Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel · 352 pages

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of "King Lear." Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a te

Sudden LossLyrical ProseGrief and MourningBittersweet
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The Little Paris Bookshop

Nina George · 392 pages

“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.” Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floa

Grief Over a SpouseGrief and MourningBittersweetEmotional
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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Anthony Marra · 416 pages

In a rural village in December 2004 Chechnya, a failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized 8-year-old daughter of a father abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded rebels and refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child. "In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle

Grief and MourningLyrical ProseTragicBittersweet
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To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf · 241 pages

This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever.In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships.

Death of a ParentSudden LossLyrical ProseGrief and Mourning
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