What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorNo Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy · 320 pages
In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed *Border Trilogy.* The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in th
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead · 416 pages
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a youn
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup · 228 pages
Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.
Giants in the Earth
O.E. Rolvaag · 560 pages
Mara and Dann
Doris Lessing · 407 pages
Mara and Dann's journey begins when they are young children interrogated by "the bad man" and swiftly whisked away by rescuers from the only home they ever knew into the drought-ridden perils of Ifrik. Told to forget their real names forever or be killed, the brother and sister live for years among the primitive Rock People, taken in by one of their own kind but always outcasts. As the drought wor
The Water Knife
Paolo Bacigalupi · 384 pages
The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that lush, luxurious arco
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair · 342 pages
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was c
House of Sand and Fog
Andre Dubus III · 365 pages
Out in the Open
Jesus Carrasco · 188 pages
"A searing dystopian vision of a young boy's flight through an unnamed, savaged country, searching for sanctuary and redemption--from one of Europe's bestselling literary stars. A young boy has fled his home. He's pursued by dangerous forces. What lies before him is an infinite, arid plain, one he must cross in order to escape those from whom he's fleeing. One night on the road, he meets an old go
Wolves of the Crescent Moon
Yousef Al-Mohaimeed · 180 pages
What Is the What
Dave Eggers · 475 pages
*What Is the What* is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children--the so-called Lost Boys--was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the Un
Spark of Life: A Novel of Resistance
Erich Maria Remarque
Habibi
Craig Thompson · 672 pages
Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and
These Are the Names
Tommy Wieringa · 273 pages
Tommy Wieringa traces two stories doomed to collide. In one, he follows a group of starving, near-feral Eurasian refugees on a harrowing quest for survival; in the other, he follows Pontus Beg, a policeman from a small border town on the steppe, as he investigates the death of a rabbi, one of the town's two remaining Jews.
Wake in Fright
Kenneth Cook · 197 pages
The controller stood back. 'Right, ' he said. 'Spin 'em!' The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet. There was silence. Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare.
Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee · 165 pages
For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, whose servant he is. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he is jolted into sympathy for the victims, and into a quixotic act of rebellion which lands him in prison.
The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin · 505 pages
**A SEASON OF ENDINGS HAS BEGUN.** IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. IT STARTS WITH DEATH, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. IT STARTS WITH BETRAYAL and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as
The Moor's Account
Laila Lalami · 323 pages
Brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America--a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the proc
Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler · 420 pages
Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity. Taking advantage of the situation, a zealous bigot wins his way into the White House. Lauren Olamina leads a new faith group directly opposed to the new government. This is the story of the group's struggle to preserve its vision. As the government turns a blind eye to the violent bigots who consider a bl
The Golden Son: A Novel
Shilpi Somaya Gowda · 413 pages
From the beloved author of "Secret Daughter" comes a moving new novel of a young man at the crossroads of life. Anil is the first person in his family to leave India, the first to attend college, the first to become a doctor. Half a world away in Dallas, Texas, he is caught up in his new life, experiencing all the freedoms and temptations of American culture: he tastes alcohol for the first time,
La Linea
Ann Jaramillo
When fifteen-year-old Miguel's time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border illegally, and join his parents in California, his younger sister's determination to join him soon imperils them both.