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The Cleaner of Chartres

Salley Vickers Β· back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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A Severed Wasp

Madeleine L'Engle Β· 388 pages

Katherine Forrester Vigneras, in a continuation of her story from The Small Rain, returns to New York City from Europe to retire. Now in her seventies, she encounters an old friend from her Greenwich Village days who, it turns out, is the former Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This leads to new demands on her resources--human

CathedralsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionChildhood Trauma
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Glittering Images

Susan Howatch Β· 504 pages

Charged by Canterbury with the spiritual monitoring of a wayward bishop, Dr. Charles Ashworth, a young, driven Anglican minister, encounters a genteel world whose deeply embedded apostasy forces him to confront his own inner demons.

CathedralsSecret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline Β· 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenSecond ChancesLiterary Fiction
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The Girl at the Lion d'Or

Sebastian Faulks Β· 253 pages

A mysterious young girl arrives to take up a post at the seedy Hotel du Lion d'Or in a small French town in the mid-1930's.

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionOrphans
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The Dean's Watch

Elizabeth Goudge Β· 383 pages

Set in a Cathedral city in the 1870s, a remote town dominated by the great cathedral and its formidable Dean Adam Ayscough, who holds a deep love for his parishioners and townspeople. But the craggy, homely old Dean, lived locked in by shyness... when an obscure watchmaker, the timid, fearful little Isaac Peabody, a genius of a clockmaker, strikes up an unlikely friendship with the Dean. It leads

CathedralsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSmall Town
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The Shipping News

Annie Proulx Β· 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

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionBittersweet
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The Magician's Assistant

Ann Patchett Β· 357 pages

What is to become of a magician's assistant without her magician? This is the question Sabine asks herself after the death of Parsifal, the magician she worked with for more than twenty years and her husband for only a few months. Parsifal loved men, especially Phan, and though Sabine loved Parsifal, she contented herself with his friendship. Now Parsifal and Phan are both gone, and Sabine is left

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSecond Chances
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce Β· 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

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSecond Chances
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The Last Chronicle of Barset

Anthony Trollope Β· 648 pages

*The Chronicles of Barsetshire, Book 6: The Last Chronicle of Barset*

CathedralsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSmall Town
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Where We Belong

Emily Giffin Β· 384 pages

Her carefully constructed life thrown into turmoil by the appearance of an eighteen-year-old girl with ties to her past, New York television producer Marian Caldwell is swept up in a maelstrom of personal discovery that changes both of their perceptions about family.

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenBittersweetFemale Lead
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The Chaperone

Laura Moriarty Β· 419 pages

"A novel about the friendship between an adolescent, pre-movie-star Louise Brooks, and the 36-year-old woman who chaperones her to New York City for a summer, in 1922, and how it changes both their lives"--

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionBittersweet
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Black Cake

Charmaine Wilkerson Β· 385 pages

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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The Tidal Zone

Sarah Moss Β· 333 pages

Adam is a stay-at-home dad who is also working on a history of the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. He is a good man and he is happy. But one day, he receives a call from his daughter's school to inform him that, for no apparent reason, fifteen-year-old Miriam has collapsed and stopped breathing. In that moment, he is plunged into a world of waiting, agonising, not knowing. The story

CathedralsCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
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The False Friend

Myla Goldberg Β· 262 pages

Celia and Djuna ruled their clique of friends with dual iron fists. But when Djuna disappeared while the duo was walking home together, Celia buried the terrible truth of that day deep down inside. Now, twenty years later, Celia is unable to consciously keep her secret any longer. Despite her success, her personal life has fallen stagnant, and, buried under the weight of her awful past, Celia retu

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionChildhood Trauma
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My Name Is Venus Black

Heather Lloyd Β· 368 pages

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionSecond Chances
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The Spire

William Golding Β· 224 pages

Told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative, this is a story of obsession. Against the advice of his builder, the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, slowly dying from tuberculosis, plans the construction of a towering spire atop the cathedral as the culmination of his life’s work but becomes increasingly deranged as the construction faces constant problems due to the sheer grandiosity of the work.

CathedralsCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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The Mother's Recompense

Edith Wharton Β· 341 pages

Opening on the French Riviera among a motley community of American expatriates, The Mother's Recompense tells the story of Kate Clephane and her reluctant return to New York society after being exiled years before for abandoning her husband and infant daughter. Oddly enough, Kate has been summoned back by that same daughter, Anne, now fully grown and intent on marrying Chris Fenno, a war hero, di

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionBittersweet
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Five Quarters of the Orange

Joanne Harris Β· 307 pages

When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation years ago. But the past and present are inextricably entwined, particularly in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise has inherited from her mother. And soon Framboise will reali

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionChildhood Trauma
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The Shell Seekers

Rosamunde Pilcher Β· 582 pages

The Shell Seekers is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The Shell Seekers is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husband and lovers--inspired with real values. The Shell Seekers centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in world you'll never forget. The Shell Seekers is a magical

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionBittersweet
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Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Beth Hoffman Β· 313 pages

When Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, the pretty but crazy 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen dies, her twelve-year-old daughter CeeCee has barely a hope in the world. To her rescue arrives Great Aunt Tootie in the most magnificent car CeeCee has ever seen, and she is whisked away to the city of Savannah. Among the sweet scent of magnolias and the loving warmth of Tootie and her colourful collection of friends

Character-DrivenLiterary FictionSecond ChancesOrphans
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The Stormchasers

Jenna Blum Β· 384 pages

As a teenager, Karena Jorge had always been the one to look out for her twin brother Charles, who suffers from bipolar disorder. But as Charles begins to refuse medication and his manic tendencies worsen, Karena finds herself caught between her loyalty to her brother and her fear for his life. Always obsessed with the weather-enraptured by its magical unpredictability that seemed to mirror his own

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenTeen PregnancyLiterary Fiction
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Mrs. Kimble

Jennifer Haigh Β· 394 pages

"Story of three women married in succession to the same man--a charismatic opportunist named Ken Kimble"--Cover

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionBittersweet
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Pull Me Under

Kelly Luce Β· 268 pages

"A searing debut novel from one of the most imaginative minds in fiction Kelly Luce's Pull Me Under tells the story of Rio Silvestri, who, when she was twelve years old, fatally stabbed a school bully. Rio, born Chizuru Akitani, is the Japanese American daughter of the revered violinist Hiro Akitani--a Living National Treasure in Japan and a man Rio hasn't spoken to since she left her home country

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Winter Garden

Kristin Hannah Β· 448 pages

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her chil

Secret PastCharacter-DrivenChildhood TraumaOrphans
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