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Anna of the Five Towns

Arnold Bennett · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough · 573 pages

The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough. Set primarily on Drogheda – a fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback named after Drogheda, Ireland – the story focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1915 to 1969.

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionToxic Family Dynamics
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Shadows on the Rock

Willa Cather · 199 pages

Set in 18th century Quebec City, this is ostensibly the narration of a year in the life of a widowed apothecary and his young daughter. A gentle tale, full of the small joys and daily struggles of a colonist's life in a harsh and unforgiving New World. Cather explores the links between the protagonists' past lives and their current existence through a series of different portraits - the apothecar

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenReligious Identity
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Villette

Charlotte Bronte

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenFemale Lead
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The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood · 352 pages

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSlow-Paced
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Eugénie Grandet

Honore de Balzac · 236 pages

Published in 1833 Part of Balzac's "Comédie Humaine"

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell · 622 pages

The story is about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s.

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe · 192 pages

Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. It depicts pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widel

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionToxic Family Dynamics
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Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy · 440 pages

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a liv

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionReligious Identity
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The Burden

Agatha Christie · 224 pages

Literary FictionCharacter-DrivenClassicsToxic Family Dynamics
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Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee · 288 pages

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch -- "Scout" -- returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memori

Literary FictionCharacter-DrivenClassicsToxic Family Dynamics
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The Small House at Allington

Anthony Trollope, Julian Thompson · 611 pages

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenFemale Lead
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The Color Purple

Alice Walker · 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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Middlemarch

George Eliot · 795 pages

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenReligious Identity
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East of Eden

John Steinbeck · 602 pages

Steinbeck considered East of Eden to be his masterpiece. In his journal, Journal of a Novel (often read as a companion to the novel) he notes that “this is the book I have always wanted and have worked and prayed to be able to write.” Set primarily in the Salinas Valley in the early twentieth century, the novel traces three generations of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – as they grapp

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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David Copperfield I

Charles Dickens

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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The Bird's Nest

Shirley Jackson · 276 pages

Elizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old whiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother's inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible migraines and backaches, her aunt takes her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist. But slowly, and with Jackson's characteristic chill, we learn that Elizabeth is not just one girl--but four

Character-DrivenLiterary FictionClassicsToxic Family Dynamics
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Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Elizabeth von Arnim · 137 pages

Told in a series of diary entries, Elizabeth and Her German Garden recounts one year in the life of an Englishwoman determined to revitalize the neglected garden of their German estate. It is in the process of laying out flower beds, ordering rose varietals, and supervising the planting that she finds peace and escape from her three young children (referred to simply as the April, May, and June ba

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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Mrs Craddock

W. Somerset Maugham · 297 pages

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionVictorian Era
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The Spoils of Poynton

Henry James · 318 pages

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionVictorian Era
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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.

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenFemale Lead
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Sons and Lovers

D.H. Lawrence · 447 pages

Sons and Lovers, a story of working-class England, is D. H. Lawrence’s third novel. It went through various drafts, and was titled “Paul Morel” until the final draft, before being published and met with an indifferent reaction from contemporary critics. Modern critics now consider it to be D. H. Lawrence’s masterpiece, with the Modern Library placing it ninth in its “100 Best English-Language Nove

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenToxic Family Dynamics
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Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald · 349 pages

A psychiatrist, Dick Diver, treats and eventually marries a wealthy patient, Nicole. Eventually, this marriage destroys him.

ClassicsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionVictorian Era
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The Forsyte Saga

John Galsworthy · 416 pages

ClassicsLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenVictorian Era

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