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Italian Shoes

Henning Mankell · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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A Whole Life

Robert Seethaler · 151 pages

Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

Elderly ProtagonistSnow and IceSlow-PacedCharacter-Driven
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The Shipping News

Annie Proulx · 337 pages

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News is a celebration of Annie Proulx's genius for storytelling and her vigorous contribution to the art of the novel. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing

IslandSnow and IceSlow-PacedBittersweet
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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

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Aloft

Chang-rae Lee · 368 pages

Terminal IllnessElderly ProtagonistSlow-PacedCharacter-Driven
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Tinkers

Paul Harding · 192 pages

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The Lightkeeper's Wife

Karen Viggers · 393 pages

A woman at the end of her life. A man unable to restart his. A history of guilty secrets and things left unsaid. A powerful, moving novel that will steal your heart.

Elderly ProtagonistTerminal IllnessIslandBittersweet
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Sweetland

Michael Crummey · 322 pages

For twelve generations, the inhabitants of a remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement. They have each been offered a generous compensation package to leave the island for good. There's just one proviso: everyone must go. Gradually, all of the residents surrender to the inevitable. All of the residents, t

Elderly ProtagonistIslandBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Sputnik Sweetheart

Haruki Murakami · 224 pages

"The scenario is as simple as it is uncomfortable: a college student falls in love (once and for all, despite everything that transpires afterward) with a classmate whose devotion to Kerouac and an untidy writerly life precludes any personal commitments - until she meets a considerably older and far more sophisticated businesswoman. It is through this wormhole that she enters Murakami's surreal ye

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The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

G.B. Edwards · 432 pages

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Gilead

Marilynne Robinson · 256 pages

**WINNER OF THE 2005 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION** In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He “preached men into the Civi

Terminal IllnessElderly ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

Stephen King · 376 pages

For the first time in #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s remarkable publishing history, the Master of Horror presents an all-new, original tale written expressly for the television screen. They’re calling it the Storm of the Century, and it’s coming hard. The residents of Little Tall Island have seen their share of nasty Maine Nor’easters, but this one is different. Not only is

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These Silent Woods

Kimi Cunningham Grant · 288 pages

A father and daughter living in the remote Appalachian mountains must reckon with the ghosts of their past in Kimi Cunningham Grant's These Silent Woods, a mesmerizing novel of suspense. No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly

Snow and IceSlow-PacedAtmosphericCharacter-Driven
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From the Mouth of the Whale

Sjon · 251 pages

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Ice

Ulla-Lena Lundberg · 444 pages

In the summer of 1947, a young priest, Petter, his wife and baby daughter, arrive by mail boat at a tiny island. They are to take over its drafty homestead from where Petter is to minister to the scattered community. In this evocative tale, Ulla-Lena Lundberg draws us into the minutiae of an austere yet purposeful life where the demands of self-sufficiency - cows to milk and sheep to graze - are t

IslandSnow and IceSlow-PacedAtmospheric
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce · 355 pages

Harold Fry has recently retired and now, he doesn't do very much. Even mowing the lawn, like his wife Maureen tells him to do, seems too much work for him. When, one day, he recieves a lettre in a pink envelope, this lazyness changes. In it, his collegue from long time ago, Queenie Hennessy, tells him she is going to die soon from a cancer in a hospice at the other end of England. Harold, at first

Terminal IllnessElderly ProtagonistSlow-PacedBittersweet
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The Summer Guest

Justin Cronin · 369 pages

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his radiant novel in stories, Mary and O'Neil, Justin Cronin has already been hailed as a writer of astonishing gifts. Now Cronin's new novel, The Summer Guest, fulfills that promise--and more. With a rare combination of emotional insight, narrative power, and lyrical grace, Cronin transforms the simple story of a dying man's last wish into a rich tapestry of

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The Sound of the Mountain

Yasunari Kawabata · 276 pages

"By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death. In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingo's life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law, who inspires in him both pity and the sti

Elderly ProtagonistSlow-PacedCharacter-DrivenBittersweet
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Good Morning, Midnight

Lily Brooks-Dalton · 264 pages

Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, refuses to abandon the research center in the Arctic when he receives news of a catastrophic event. Soon after, he discovers a mysterious child and realizes that the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone. Meanwhile, Mission Specialist Sullivan and her crew, the first astronauts to delve into deep space, discover that Mission Control is no longer on the

Elderly ProtagonistSnow and IceSlow-PacedBittersweet
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A Wedding In December

Anita Shreve · 325 pages

Gathering to attend a wedding in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, seven former classmates find the reunion marked by the death of a spouse, a traumatic past event, a shocking secret, and health issues.

Terminal IllnessSecond Chance RomanceSlow-PacedBittersweet
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An Artist of the Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro · 208 pages

As Japan rebuilds her cities after the calamity of World War II, the celebrated painter Masuji Ono should be enjoying a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to a life and career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism, a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

Elderly ProtagonistSlow-PacedBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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All the Little Live Things

Wallace Stegner · 345 pages

An Eastern couple retire to California in search of peace after the death of their wayward son, only to have their paradise shattered by painful reminders of the past.

Elderly ProtagonistTerminal IllnessBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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The Snow Child

Eowyn Ivey · 389 pages

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-hai

Snow and IceSlow-PacedBittersweetAtmospheric
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Dear John

Nicholas Sparks · 282 pages

John, a high school dropout, enlists in the Army not knowing what else to do with his life. While in the Army he meets Savannah, they fall in love and she awaits his return from the Army. After 9/11 John feels it's his duty to re-enlist. During their long separation Savannah falls in love and marries someone else.

Terminal IllnessSecond Chance RomanceSlow-PacedBittersweet
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The Underpainter

Jane Urquhart · 340 pages

"The detached eye of the narrator never falters, though passion hums beneath the surface like some vast primeval beast beneath the ice. The mixing of paints becomes erotic, and the minute recalling of details is sensual...Characters appear like wraiths from the fog, become dazzling specks on a snowblind eye, encounter dreams and apparitions, while the cold, painted-out hero is laid before us in hi

Elderly ProtagonistSlow-PacedCharacter-DrivenBittersweet
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