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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

NeglectAbsent ParentBildungsromanComing of Age
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Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi

NeglectAbsent ParentBildungsromanComing of Age
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To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee · 309 pages

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the United States. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poi

BildungsromanComing of AgeAmerican SouthCourtroom Drama
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Snow Falling on Cedars

David Guterson · 424 pages

On San Piedro, an island of rugged, spectacular beauty in Puget Sound, home to salmon fishermen and strawberry farmers, a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial, charged with murder. The year is 1954, and the shadow of World War II, with its brutality abroad and internment of Japanese Americans at home, hangs over the courtroom. Ishmael Cambers, who lost an arm in the Pacific war and now runs th

First LoveDual TimelineAtmosphericCourtroom Drama
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Circle of Friends

Maeve Binchy · 560 pages

It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, growing up, inseparable, in the village of Knockglen. Benny--the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents...Eve--the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blueblood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family to be raised by nuns. Eve and Benny--they knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains

BildungsromanBelongingComing of AgeFirst Love
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The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

NeglectAbsent ParentBildungsromanComing of Age
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We Begin at the End

Chris Whitaker · 400 pages

There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a

NeglectAbsent ParentComing of AgeSmall Town
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The Unmaking of June Farrow

Adrienne Young · 320 pages

Absent ParentDual TimelineAmerican SouthAtmospheric
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The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett · 256 pages

A ten-year-old orphan comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors where she discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.

NeglectAbsent ParentBildungsromanComing of Age
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Let Me Die in His Footsteps

Lori Roy · 352 pages

On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 halfway between her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran runs through the lavender fields to the well on the Baines' place. Hollerans don't go near Baines since Joseph Carl was buried two decades ago. At the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water in search of her future. When the body she sees there in the moonlight is discovered come morning, An

American SouthDual TimelineAtmosphericLyrical Prose
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Broken Country

Clare Leslie Hall · 307 pages

*“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”* Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel W

Courtroom DramaFirst LoveDual TimelineEmotional
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The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd · 311 pages

Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racis

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthBelongingAbsent Parent
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In One Person

John Irving · 448 pages

A New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Ir

BildungsromanAbsent ParentBelongingComing of Age
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David Copperfield

Charles Dickens · 742 pages

NeglectBildungsromanComing of AgeFirst Love
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The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton · 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

NeglectAbsent ParentComing of AgeSmall Town
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Little Women

Louisa May Alcott · 321 pages

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, *Little Women*. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War. It is no

BildungsromanComing of AgeAbsent ParentFirst Love
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The Story of a New Name

Elena Ferrante · 480 pages

In 2012, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker’s James Wood described as “large, captivating, amiably peopled...a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal,” F

BildungsromanBelongingComing of AgeEmotional
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Crank

Ellen Hopkins · 537 pages

Kristina is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then she meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ride turns into a struggle for her mind, her soul---her life.

Absent ParentNeglectComing of AgeLyrical Prose
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Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte · 474 pages

The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her ti

BildungsromanNeglectAbsent ParentAtmospheric
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Absent ParentLyrical ProseComing of AgeAtmospheric
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Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

BildungsromanComing of AgeFirst LoveEmotional
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Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden · 456 pages

A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a n

BildungsromanComing of AgeAtmosphericLyrical Prose
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Malas

Marcela Fuentes · 375 pages

Dual TimelineAtmosphericSmall TownLyrical Prose
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Because of Winn-Dixie

Kate DiCamillo · 182 pages

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her becauThe summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket—and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor. A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tel

Absent ParentAmerican SouthBelongingComing of Age
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