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Recommendations based on So Much for Thatby Lionel Shriver
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We Need to Talk About Kevin
by Lionel Shriver
A mother's struggle to come to terms with the monstrous acts of her disturbed son.
In the wake of a school massacre conducted by Kevin Khatchadourian, the 15-year-old son of Franklin Plaskett and Eva Khatchadourian, Eva begins writing letters to Franklin in November 2000. She ... (Wikipedia)
Big Brother
by Lionel Shriver
A woman's obsession with her brother leads to a disturbing and destructive relationship.
For Pandora, cooking is a form of love. Alas, her husband, Fletcher, a self-employed high-end cabinetmaker, now spurns the “toxic” dishes that he’d savored through their courtship, and devotes hours ... (Goodreads)
The Post-Birthday World
by Lionel Shriver
A woman's choice between two men, and its consequences, explored in two parallel universes.
In this eagerly awaited new novel, Lionel Shriver, the Orange Prize-winning author of the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, delivers an imaginative and entertaining look at the ... (Goodreads)
Digging to America
by Anne Tyler
Two families from different cultures, connected by the adoption of two babies, explore the complexities of family and culture.
Digging to America is a story set in Baltimore, Maryland about two very different families’ experiences with adoption and their relationships with each other. Sami and Ziba Yazdan, an ... (Wikipedia)
Winter in Madrid
by C.J. Sansom
A spy thriller set during the Spanish Civil War, uncovering hidden truths and secrets.
After his recovery, Dunkirk veteran Harry Brett is recruited by the British Secret Service to make contact with Sandy Forsyth, a shady Madrid -based British businessman and a former school friend. ... (Wikipedia)
Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson
Private investigator Tracy Waterhouse rescues a child and buys a dog, leading to a complex web of secrets and lies.
The main story takes place over a few days in present-day (2010) Leeds, England and vicinity. There are frequent flashbacks to 1975, when the mystery being investigated originated. ... (Wikipedia)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen
A family saga revealing the struggles of a divided nation, and the power of love to heal.
The novel opens with a brief look at the Berglund family during their time living in St. Paul, Minnesota , from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. The Berglunds are portrayed as an ideal ... (Wikipedia)
Elizabeth Is Missing
by Emma Healey
An elderly woman's struggle with dementia, as she desperately searches for her missing friend.
Maud, a grandmother in her 80s living with Alzheimer's disease , relies on sticky notes to get through the day as her memory slowly deteriorates. One day her best friend, another elderly woman named ... (Wikipedia)
Eventide
by Kent Haruf
An exploration of life in a small rural community, and the struggles of its inhabitants.
Kent Haruf, award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel of masterful authority. The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live ... (Goodreads)
Home Front
by Kristin Hannah
A family's struggle to survive in wartime, and the emotional toll it takes.
In this powerhouse of a novel, Kristin Hannah explores the intimate landscape of a troubled marriage with this provocative and timely portrait of a husband and wife, in love and at war. All marriages ... (Goodreads)
The System of the World
by Neal Stephenson
A thrilling adventure of espionage, science, and revolution in a world on the brink of chaos.
Daniel Waterhouse returns to England from his "Technologickal College" project in Boston in order to try to resolve the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus . ... (Wikipedia)
We Were the Mulvaneys
by Joyce Carol Oates
A family unravels after a traumatic event shatters their close-knit bond.
Michael and Corinne Mulvaney are the parents of four children: Michael Jr., Patrick, Marianne, and Judd. Living in a picture perfect farm in upstate New York , the Mulvaneys own a successful roofing ... (Wikipedia)
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Two sisters navigate the turmoil of 1930s Shanghai, while struggling to protect each other.
Shanghai Girls is divided into three parts: Fate, Fortune, and Destiny. Here See treats Chinese immigration from a personal view through Pearl's narration. In, On Gold Mountain, she objectively ... (Wikipedia)
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
A man's journey of understanding, uncovering a dark secret from his past.
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of ... (Goodreads)
A God in Ruins
by Kate Atkinson
An exploration of the life of a World War II pilot and the effects of trauma on his family.
The novel is about the life of Teddy Todd (younger brother of Ursula Todd, the protagonist of the companion work,, Life After Life, ). Events in his life are not revealed in chronological order. The ... (Wikipedia)
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
by Helen Simonson
A widower finds love and acceptance in an unlikely place, challenging social conventions.
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 ... (Goodreads)
Suite Française
by Irène Némirovsky
A story of love and loss set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France.
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. By the early l940s, when ... (Goodreads)
Flight Behavior
by Barbara Kingsolver
A woman's struggle to reconcile her faith and environmentalism as she faces a mysterious ecological disaster.
Dellarobia Turnbow is a 28-year-old discontented housewife living with her poor family on a farm in Appalachia . On a hike to begin an affair with a telephone repairman, Turnbow finds millions of ... (Wikipedia)
Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
An elderly man reflects on his past, uncovering long-buried secrets and memories.
We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of ... (Goodreads)
Purple Hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A young girl's struggle to find her place in a family and society torn apart by political turmoil.
A previously published edition of ISBN 9781616202415 can be found, here., Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, ... (Goodreads)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
A family's secrets and a girl's quest for the truth about her own identity.
The, New York Times, bestselling author of, The Jane Austen Book Club, introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this novel that won the PEN/Faulkner Award ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Marriage Plot
by Jeffrey Eugenides
A young woman's exploration of love, life, and her place in the world.
It's the early 1980s - the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the ... (Goodreads)
The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey
A couple's dream of a child comes true in the Alaskan wilderness, but with unexpected consequences.
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she ... (Goodreads)
Defending Jacob
by William Landay
A father must defend his son who is accused of murder, unraveling the truth of a complex crime.
Andy Barber is an assistant district attorney in Newton , Massachusetts. He is investigating the murder of a 14-year-old boy, Ben Rifkin, who was a classmate of his son Jacob and was found stabbed to ... (Wikipedia)
The Art of Fielding
by Chad Harbach
A college baseball team's success and failures are intertwined with the lives of five individuals.
Henry Skrimshander begins the novel as a 17-year-old playing on a Legion baseball team in Lankton, South Dakota. Although physically short and not muscular, Henry has an unusual gift for fielding, ... (Wikipedia)
Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and disturbing story of a man's descent into depravity.
Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee , in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like ... (Wikipedia)
Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
Interconnected stories of ordinary lives in 1970s New York, inspired by a high-wire artist's death-defying feat.
The events of the story are told in a largely non-linear fashion, with several different narrators telling the story from different perspectives. The story is interspersed with fictionalized accounts ... (Wikipedia)
I Let You Go
by Clare Mackintosh
A mother's life is shattered when her son is killed in a hit-and-run accident. She moves to a remote Welsh town to escape her past, but it catches up with her.
A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away ... (Goodreads)
