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Recommendations based on Shuggie Bainby Douglas Stuart
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
An exploration of the life of a small-town woman, revealing her struggles and emotional complexities.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. At times stern, at other times ... (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)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
A letter from a son to his illiterate mother, exploring their family's history and his own coming-of-age as a gay Vietnamese-American.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began ... (Goodreads)
Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman
A failed bank robber takes hostages in an apartment viewing, leading to a comedic and heartwarming exploration of human connection and anxiety.
An instant #1, New York Times, bestseller, the new novel from the author of, A Man Called Ove , is a “quirky, big-hearted novel… .Wry, wise and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
The Overstory
by Richard Powers
Nine strangers are brought together by their love for trees, leading to a fight to save the last of the remaining forests.
Nicholas Hoel, Mimi Ma, Adam Appich, Ray Brinkman, Dorothy Cazaly, Douglas Pavlicek, Neelay Mehta, Patricia Westerford, and Olivia Vandergriff are people who had unique relationships with trees which ... (Wikipedia)
Tin Man
by Sarah Winman
A story of friendship, love, and loss as three characters navigate life-altering decisions.
This is almost a love story. Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to ... (Goodreads)
The Gustav Sonata
by Rose Tremain
A tale of two friends in Switzerland, spanning over 70 years, exploring the complexities of friendship, love, and betrayal.
Winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, , A poignant tale about the enduring friendship between two men under the shadow of the Second World War., Gustav Perle grows up in a small ... (Barnes & Noble)
They Both Die at the End
by Adam Silvera
Two strangers, united by fate, explore life and death while forming a unique bond.
Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable ... (Goodreads)
Men Without Women
by Haruki Murakami
Collection of stories exploring the experiences of men coping with loneliness and isolation.
A dazzling new collection of short stories—the first major new work of fiction from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami since his #1 best-selling Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His ... (Goodreads)
Fresh Water for Flowers
by Valérie Perrin
A cemetery caretaker's life is revealed through the flowers left on the graves. A story of love, loss, and the beauty of life.
A, WALL STREET JOURNAL, BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2021,A 2020 INDIES INTRODUCE & INDIE NEXT LIST PICK,, A #1 international best-seller,, Fresh Water for Flowers, is an intimately told story about a woman ... (Barnes & Noble)
Hurricane Season
by Fernanda Melchor
A brutal murder in a small Mexican village exposes the dark secrets and violence that lurk beneath the surface of everyday life.
A New York Times Notable Book (2020) A Guardian and Boston.com Best Book of 2020 A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020 The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse—by a group of children playing ... (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)
Butcher's Crossing
by John Williams
An adventure tale of a young man in the American West, searching for a place to belong.
William Andrews, a Harvard student in the early 1870s, , is not happy with the mundanities of everyday life. After becoming inspired by the poetry and philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, , he decides ... (Wikipedia)
Disgrace
by J.M. Coetzee
A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)
Pachinko
by Lee Min-jin
A saga spanning four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, struggling to survive and thrive amidst prejudice and poverty.
The novel takes place over the course of three books: Book I Gohyang/Hometown, Book II Motherland, and Book III Pachinko. In 1883, in the little island fishing village of Yeongdo , which is a ferry ... (Wikipedia)
Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson
A woman lives multiple lives, reflecting on choices and consequences and the power of love.
The novel has an unusual structure, repeatedly looping back in time to describe alternative possible lives for its central character, Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 to an ... (Wikipedia)
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
A novel-in-verse that follows the interconnected lives of twelve British women of color.
Joint Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2019 Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve ... (Goodreads)
The Binding
by Bridget Collins
In a world where memories can be bound into books, a young man becomes a bookbinder and uncovers a dark secret.
Books are dangerous things in Collins's alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It's a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or ... (Goodreads)
And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini
Interconnected stories of family and love, tracing the consequences of decisions made throughout life.
The novel opens in the year 1952. Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. ... (Wikipedia)
The People in the Trees
by Hanya Yanagihara
A scientist's rise to fame and fall from grace, after discovering a mysterious tribe on a remote island.
In the late 1990s Dr. Ronald Kubodera, a colleague of Nobel Laureate Dr. Abraham Norton Perina, mourns Norton's downfall after being convicted of sexually abusing his own children . Kubodera ... (Wikipedia)
The Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
Two boys sentenced to a brutal reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida struggle to survive and maintain their humanity.
Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. ... (Goodreads)
The Sea
by John Banville
A man reflects on his past and reconciles his memories of youth with the present.
The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those he loved as a child and as an adult. The novel is written as a reflective ... (Wikipedia)
The Doll Factory
by Elizabeth Macneal
A young woman in Victorian London dreams of becoming an artist, but becomes entangled with a sinister collector of curiosities.
The Doll Factory, the debut novel by Elizabeth Macneal, is an intoxicating story of art, obsession and possession. London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd ... (Goodreads)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain
Insurance salesman and femme fatale plot to murder her husband for the insurance money. Things go awry.
Walter Huff, an insurance agent, falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about accident insurance for her unsuspecting husband. In spite of his instinctual decency, and intrigued ... (Wikipedia)
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Story of two sisters navigating a civil war in Nigeria, and the effects of colonialism.
The novel takes place in Nigeria prior to and during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The effect of the war is shown through the relationships of five people's lives including the twin daughters of ... (Wikipedia)
Us
by David Nicholls
A couple's marriage is tested during a summer trip across Europe, forcing them to confront their past and future together.
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three ... (Goodreads)
