What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorRemarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt · 368 pages
After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his hum
The Sky Unwashed
Irene Zabytko · 263 pages
"Early on an April Saturday in 1986 in a farm village in Ukraine, widow Marusia Petrenko and her family awake to a day of traditional wedding preparations. Late that night, after all the dancing and drinking, Marusia's son Yurko leaves for his shift at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl.". "In the morning, the air has a strange metallic taste. The priest doesn't show up for services. Yurko does
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson · 394 pages
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major P
Florence Gordon
Brian Morton · 320 pages
"Meet Florence Gordon: blunt, brilliant, cantankerous and passionate, feminist icon to young women, invisible and underappreciated by most everyone else. At seventy-five, Florence has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
Elizabeth Taylor · 224 pages
"On a rainy Sunday afternoon in January the recently widowed Mrs. Palfrey moves to the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington. "If it's not nice, I needn't stay," she promises herself, as she settles into this haven for the genteel and the decayed. "Three elderly widows and one old man who seemed to dislike female company and seldom got any other kind" serve for her fellow residents, and there is the
The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold · 147 pages
The Man in the Wooden Hat
Jane Gardam · 260 pages
The New York Times called Sir Edward Feathers one of the most memorable characters in modern literature. A lyrical novel that recalls his fully lived life, Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat. Old Filth was E
A Gift Upon the Shore
M.K. Wren · 374 pages
In the Pacific Northwest of the near future, the golden age has ended in apocalypse. Nuclear war has unleased firestorms and the killing cold of nuclear winter. Earthquakes and tidal waves have ravaged the West Coast of America. Desperate violent looters comb the devastated land. And a horrifying pandemic lays waste to the remaining human population. But one of the few survivors, Mary Hope, is det
Some Tame Gazelle
Barbara Pym · 252 pages
Harriet and Belinda Bede are middle-aged sisters who have only two things in common: their spinsterhood and their love for each other. Harriet is a bubbly, chubby coquette. Belinda is a meek, thin romantic who, since her youth, has nurtured an unrequited love for the town's vicar. Barbara Pym provides her heroines with a memorable clique of admirers: Archdeacon Hoccleve, a pompous man of the c
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
An Unnecessary Woman
Rabih Alameddine · 320 pages
"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the
En man som heter Ove
Fredrik Backman · 346 pages
When the Wind Blows
Raymond Briggs · 46 pages
Raymond Briggs' now famous bestselling comic cartoon book depicts the effects of a nuclear attack on an elderly couple in his usual humorous yet macabre way.
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout · 288 pages
Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, as she grows older she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her, their triumphs and tragedies. We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches
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
The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood · 638 pages
More than fifty years on, Iris Chase is remembering Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth-century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale of memory, intrigue and betrayal...
The Spectator Bird
Wallace Stegner · 214 pages
Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to
Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver · 363 pages
A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees.
The Brooklyn Follies
Paul Auster · 320 pages
Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore - a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the
Noah's Compass
Anne Tyler · 283 pages
From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is tro
Mężczyzna imieniem Ove
Fredrick Backman · 352 pages
All Passion Spent
Vita Sackville-West · 296 pages
Slow Man
J.M. Coetzee · 265 pages
A masterful new novel from one of the greatest writers alive. Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. T