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🧲 Books like this

The Little Match Girl

Hans Christian Andersen · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Bridge to Terabithia

Katherine Paterson · 144 pages

The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm.

TearjerkerTragicWorking-Class ProtagonistBittersweet
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The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry · 37 pages

Wonderful Christmas story, you laugh and cry at the same time, tender, inspiring, and the best of it is, you know it's all a storm in a teacup. What they have is priceless.

TearjerkerWorking-Class ProtagonistBittersweetChristmas
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The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton · 192 pages

According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs f

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Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy · 457 pages

An intimate portrait of a woman, one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines...Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne'er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d'Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin—a jour

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The Happy Prince

Oscar Wilde · 64 pages

BittersweetChildren'sShort StoriesTragic
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Where the Red Fern Grows

Wilson Rawls · 249 pages

More than anything else in life, Billy Colman wanted a dog. When at the age of ten he saw an ad for two coon-hound pups, he resolved to its their purchase price of $50. Two years later, having scrimped and saved, he attained his goal—the dogs were his, and he named them Old Dan and Little Ann. Billy spent weeks training his dogs to hunt their ring-tailed quarry. Night after night the three of t

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Black Beauty

Anna Sewell · 226 pages

Black Beauty is the suspenseful and deeply moving account of a horse's experiences at the hands of many owners — some, sensitive riders who treated him gently; others, cruel drivers who thoughtlessly inflicted lasting damage. Written as the animal's autobiography, and as an appeal for the humane treatment of horses,

TearjerkerClassismBittersweetClassics
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Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck · 118 pages

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A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini · 416 pages

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an

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Old Yeller

Fred Gipson · 158 pages

At first, Travis couldn't stand the sight of Old Yeller. The stray dog was ugly, and a thieving rascal, too. But he sure was clever, and a smart dog could be a big help on the wild Texas frontier, especially with Papa away on a long cattle drive up to Abilene. Strong and courageous, Old Yeller proved that he could protect Travis's family from any sort of danger. But can Travis do the same for O

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A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens · 114 pages

A reprinting of the 1843 first edition, complete with the original illustrations, is supplemented by over eighty related sketches and annotations on and analyses of the text and historical notes on the writing of "The Christmas Carol."

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Stoner

John Williams · 278 pages

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Villette

Charlotte Bronte

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom · 196 pages

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a 2003 novel by Mitch Albom. It follows the life and death of a ride mechanic named Eddie who is killed in an amusement park accident and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. It was published by Hyperion and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

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Sounder

William H. Armstrong · 116 pages

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and through his relationship with his devoted dog Sounder.

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Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Chris Cleave · 464 pages

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The Snow Goose

Paul Gallico · 80 pages

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We Are Not Ourselves

Matthew Thomas · 620 pages

"Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed. Eileen can't help but dream of a calmer life, in a better neighborhood. When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men s

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Pachinko

Min Jin Lee · 560 pages

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision

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Through A Glass, Darkly

Jostein Gaarder · 161 pages

As Cecilia lies ill in bed, and her family prepares for Christmas, knowing she will not recover, an angel steps through her window to chat about life, death, and the universe.

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Moloka'i

Alan Brennert · 389 pages

Seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family's 1890s Honolulu home when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her to reenter the world.

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Me Before You

Jojo Moyes · 451 pages

Louisa Clark is an ordinary young woman living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cann

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The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton · 320 pages

Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s, the world in which she grew up, and from which she spent her life escaping. Newland Archer, Wharton's protagonist, charming, tactful, enlightened, is a thorough product of this society; he accepts its standards and abides by its rules but

TragicBittersweetClassismClassics
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Sarah's Key

Tatiana de Rosnay · 342 pages

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode. Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking th

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