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🧲 Books like this

Tortuga

Rudolfo Anaya · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Of Human Bondage

W. Somerset Maugham · 582 pages

Of Human Bondage is a moving exploration of loneliness, obsessive love, and a young man's search for meaning and direction in life. Written in the third person, it tells the story of Philip Carey, a self-conscious orphan with a club-foot who learns medicine. Not only is this a significant work in the Bildungsroman tradition, but its largely autobiographical basis gives it a special interest in vie

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The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

Scott Stambach · 336 pages

"The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is comic and staggeringly tragic, often both in a single sentence ... A grittier, Eastern European, more grown-up The Fault in Our Stars."--Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child. Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. Born deformed, yet mentally keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong

HospitalDisabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationTeen Protagonist
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The Golden Age

Joan London · 231 pages

Escaping the perils of World War II Hungary for Australia, Frank is diagnosed with polio and sent to a children's hospital where he falls in love with a fellow patient while their families struggle to adjust to life in a new culture.

HospitalDisabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationLiterary Fiction
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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr · 544 pages

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are t

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers · 334 pages

Set in 1930s Georgia, the novel centers around a deaf and mute man, John Singer. Singer has been devastated by the loss of his dear friend, Antonapoulos, who was committed to an asylum for bad behavior

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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Blink Once

Cylin Busby

West, a high school senior with everything going for him until an accident leaves him paralyzed, connects with Olivia, a patient in the hospital room next to his, who seems to understand his dreams and nightmares but who has a secret.

HospitalDisabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationTeen Protagonist
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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

David Wroblewski · 566 pages

A tale reminiscent of "Hamlet" that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.

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Wonderland

Joyce Carol Oates · 511 pages

Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life. Spanning from the Great Depression to the turbulent Vietnam War era, Wonderland is the epic account of Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with his life spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned

BildungsromanHospitalComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Icy Sparks

Gwyn Hyman Rubio · 308 pages

At the age of ten, an Appalachian girl develops croaks, jerks and spasms, which leads to her explusion from school. After treatment--she has Tourette's syndrome--she learns to control herself, attends college and there is a happy ending.

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The Witch's Brat

Rosemary Sutcliff · 128 pages

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The Cider House Rules

John Irving · 573 pages

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

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The Beginning of Everything

Robyn Schneider · 352 pages

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Peace Like a River

Leif Enger · 313 pages

"Raised on tales of cowboys and pirates, eleven-year-old Reuben Land has little doubt that miracles happen all around us, and that it's up to us to "make of it what we will." Reuben was born with no air in his lungs, and it was only when his father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that his lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma from then on, making him a boy

Disability RepresentationDisabled ProtagonistComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Kim Edwards · 408 pages

Kim Edwards's stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives fo

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The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

Robert Dugoni · 448 pages

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It's Kind of a Funny Story

Ned Vizzini · 444 pages

A humorous account of a New York City teenager's battle with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.

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Things Not Seen

Andrew Clements · 251 pages

Bobby Phillips is an average fifteen-year-old-boy. Until the morning he wakes up and can't see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming-Bobby is just plain invisible. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to Bobby's new condition; even his dad the physicist can't figure it out. For Bobby that means no school, no friends, no life. He's a missing person. Then he meets Alicia. She's blin

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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.

HospitalDisability RepresentationComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Human Punk

John King · 352 pages

Summary:For fifteen year old Martin, growing up in Slough, the summer of 1977 means punk rock, reggae, disco, stolen cars, cut-throat gangs, and a job picking cherries for the gypsies. Life is sweet until hes beaten up and thrown in the Grand Union canal with his best friend, Smiles. Fast forward to 1988 and Joe is heading home on the Trans-Siberian Express after three years working in a Hong Kong

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The Story of My Life

Helen Keller · 240 pages

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Be Faithful Unto Death

Zsigmond Moricz · 332 pages

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Everything, Everything

Nicola Yoon · 320 pages

The story of a teenage girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.

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Wildlife

Richard Ford · 169 pages

The story of Joe, a sixteen-year-old boy and his family who moved to Montana, in 1960. There their lives changed in ways they could not have anticipated.

BildungsromanComing of AgeLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist

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