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Recommendations based on The Absolutistby John Boyne
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
by John Boyne
A man's life journey spanning seven decades and three continents, searching for love and acceptance.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast ... (Goodreads)
This House Is Haunted
by John Boyne
A young governess is hired to care for two children in a remote English estate, but soon discovers the house is haunted by a malevolent spirit.
1867. Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall on a dark and chilling night. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands ... (Goodreads)
A History of Loneliness
by John Boyne
Uncovering the truth about Ireland's past, exploring the lasting effects of abuse.
Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly ... (Goodreads)
Call Me By Your Name
by André Aciman
A tender story of first love, exploring the complexities of identity, sexuality and desire.
The narrator, Elio Perlman , recalls the events of the summer of about 1987, when he was seventeen and living with his parents in Italy . Each summer, his parents would take in a doctoral student as ... (Wikipedia)
The Light Between Oceans
by M.L. Stedman
A lighthouse keeper and his wife make a heartbreaking decision that has lifelong repercussions.
Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found, here, Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse ... (Goodreads)
The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
A dystopian tale of survival as humanity faces a new plague, and two women fight against a powerful corporation.
The Year of the Flood details the events of, Oryx and Crake, from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands , specifically the God's Gardeners. God's Gardeners are a religious sect that ... (Wikipedia)
Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
A small-town hockey team and its community grapple with the consequences of a traumatic event.
Peter Andersson, in his forties, is the general manager of the ice hockey club in Beartown, a small town located somewhere in Sweden. Peter grew up in Beartown and was a junior hockey star. He went ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
Promises
by Marie Sexton
A gay romance novel about a man who has given up on love and a man who is determined to make him believe in it again.
Jared Thomas has lived his whole life in the small mountain town of Coda, Colorado. He can't imagine living anywhere else. Unfortunately, the only other gay man in town is twice his age and used to ... (Goodreads)
Everneath
by Brodi Ashton
After spending 100 years in the underworld, Nikki returns to the surface to say goodbye to her loved ones before being forced to return.
Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . ... (Barnes & Noble)
Snow Falling on Cedars
by David Guterson
A murder trial in a small, coastal town reveals secrets of the past and its inhabitants.
Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the state of Washington coast in 1954, the plot revolves around a murder case in which Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American ... (Wikipedia)
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
A young girl's journey of grief and healing as she discovers the secrets of her beloved uncle's life.
June Elbus is a 14-year-old girl living in Westchester in 1986. She is in love with her gay uncle, Finn Weiss, a fact she is scared to admit even to herself. Finn is dying of AIDS. Being a ... (Wikipedia)
Stormbird
by Conn Iggulden
The beginning of the War of the Roses, as seen through the eyes of powerful men and women who fought for the throne of England.
King Henry V - the great Lion of England - is long dead. In 1437, after years of regency, the pious and gentle Henry VI, the Lamb, comes of age and accedes to the English throne. His poor health and ... (Goodreads)
The Lifeboat
by Charlotte Rogan
After a shipwreck, a group of survivors struggle to survive on a lifeboat, revealing their true nature as they fight for survival.
The sinking of an ocean liner leaves a newly married woman battling for survival in this powerful debut novel. Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life. In ... (Barnes & Noble)
Alias Grace
by Margaret Atwood
A psychological thriller that examines the true story of a 19th century Canadian murderess.
Grace Marks, the convicted murderess, has been hired out from prison to serve as a domestic servant in the home of the Governor of the penitentiary. A Committee of gentlemen and ladies from the ... (Wikipedia)
A Land More Kind Than Home
by Wiley Cash
An exploration of the rural American South, casting a spotlight on the bonds of family and the power of faith.
In his phenomenal debut novel—a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small North Carolina town—author Wiley Cash displays a remarkable talent ... (Barnes & Noble)
Wither
by Lauren DeStefano
In a future where genetic engineering has gone wrong, young girls are forced into polygamous marriages to repopulate the world.
Wither describes a future where genetic engineering has cured humanity of all diseases and defects. People worldwide have foregone conceiving children naturally in favor of this new science. This ... (Wikipedia)
Heft
by Liz Moore
An unlikely bond between two vastly different teenage boys, struggling with identity and family.
Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and ... (Goodreads)
Long Lost
by Harlan Coben
A man goes on a quest to uncover the truth behind his missing sister's disappearance.
Myron Bolitar receives a phone call from an ex-lover, Terese, who asks him to come to Paris immediately. Upon arriving, Myron is informed by French police that Terese's ex-husband, Rick, has been ... (Wikipedia)
An Unnecessary Woman
by Rabih Alameddine
An aging woman's reflections on life, love, and literature.
One of Beirut’s most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, The Hakawati , with a heartrending novel that celebrates the singular life of an obsessive introvert, ... (Goodreads)
The Tenderness of Wolves
by Stef Penney
In 1867 Canada, a woman sets out to find her missing son and becomes embroiled in a murder investigation.
Structurally, The Tenderness of Wolves is divided into four parts: “Disappearance”, “The Fields of Heaven”, “The Winter Partners”, and “The Sickness of Long Thinking”. The novel opens with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
by Rachel Joyce
An elderly man's unexpected quest of faith, discovering the power of hope and love.
Harold Fry, 65, has cut the lawn outside his home at Kingsbridge on the south coast of Devon when he receives a letter. A colleague of twenty years ago, Queenie Hennessy, has cancer and is in a ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Red Road
by Moira Young
A dystopian adventure of survival and family, as a young woman sets out on a quest to save her kidnapped brother.
▶, ACE #1, Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her ... (Goodreads)
Did You Ever Have a Family
by Bill Clegg
A tragic event shatters a woman's life, forcing her to leave her hometown and confront her past. A story of grief, loss, and redemption.
The novel focuses on June Reid, a beautiful, rich Connecticut woman. On the night before her daughter’s wedding, June Reid loses her daughter, her daughter’s fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend ... (Wikipedia)
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden
Two Cree snipers fight in WWI, one returns home addicted to morphine, the other lost to the war.
It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is ... (Goodreads)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry
A young Irishman flees famine and war, finding love and a new family in the American West during the Indian and Civil Wars.
Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian ... (Goodreads)
The Children's Book
by A.S. Byatt
Story of a family's life in Edwardian England and their intergenerational relationships.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I ... (Goodreads)
Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok
A young immigrant girl's struggles to keep up academically and financially in the US.
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from ... (Goodreads)
Benediction
by Kent Haruf
A story of compassion and redemption in a small Colorado town.
When Dad Lewis is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife must work together, along with their daughter, to make his final days as comfortable as possible, despite the bitter absence of their ... (Goodreads)
