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Recommendations based on Homer & Langleyby E.L. Doctorow
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Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow
Interweaving stories of disparate individuals as they navigate the changing social and cultural landscape of early 20th century America.
The novel centers on a wealthy family living in New Rochelle, New York , referred to as Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother, Grandfather, and 'the little boy', Father and Mother's young son. The ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
My Ántonia
by Willa Cather
A young man's reminiscences of his childhood in rural Nebraska, and of his friendships with the immigrants he met there.
Orphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents. Jake, a farmhand from Virginia, rides with the 10-year-old boy. On the ... (Wikipedia)
The March
by E.L. Doctorow
A fictionalized account of General Sherman's march through Georgia during the American Civil War, told from multiple perspectives.
Published in 2005 by E.L. Doctorow , The March is a historical fiction novel set in late 1864 and early 1865 near the conclusion of the American Civil War . Central to the novel is the character 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)
The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
Interwoven stories of three women and the impact of Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway.
Note: This Summary does not contain the whole book, nor end at the ending. The stream-of-consciousness style being so prominent in this work, a summary of the plot based on physical action does not ... (Wikipedia)
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
A nostalgic reflection on a wealthy family and the enduring power of love.
The novel is divided into three parts, framed by a prologue and epilogue. The prologue takes place during the final years of the Second World War . Charles Ryder and his battalion are sent to a ... (Wikipedia)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
by Robert M. Pirsig
A philosophical exploration of the meaning of life, seen through the lens of a cross-country motorcycle journey.
Robert M. Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an examination of how we live, a meditation on how to live better set around the narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's ... (Goodreads)
Tinkers
by Paul Harding
A dying man reflects on his life and family, grappling with his mortality.
The Los Angeles Times, praised "a writer [who] describes something so well—snow, oranges, dirt—that you can smell it or feel it or sense it in the room." ,, The New Yorker, enjoyed Harding's ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Spanning centuries, the intertwining stories of two African sisters, their descendants, and the legacy of slavery.
Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but ... (Wikipedia)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
An epic tale of family and loyalty set in a rural Wisconsin landscape.
Forte's Children Edgar comes from a line of dog breeders. After buying a farm, his grandfather, John Sawtelle, rents out the farmland and starts dog breeding . He and his wife have two sons, Edgar's ... (Wikipedia)
The Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (Wikipedia)
State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
A journey in the Amazon rainforest to find a missing colleague and unlock the secrets of a mysterious drug.
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, "State of Wonder" presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional ... (Goodreads)
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
An outrageous satire of race and civil rights in modern America.
The novel concerns a narrator, referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me," who attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles ... (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)
The Private Patient
by P.D. James
A gripping crime-mystery of murder and secrets, set in a rural English village.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a murder at a private nursing home for rich patients being treated by the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. A welcome ... (Goodreads)
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
by Fannie Flagg
A Southern small-town woman's life is changed by mysterious events that open her eyes to a larger world.
Elner Shimfissle, an octogenarian who doesn't know her own age since her sister Ida buried the family Bible to conceal hers, is known and liked by a large circle of friends and admirers. One morning ... (Wikipedia)
Ellen Foster
by Kaye Gibbons
A young girl's struggle to find a permanent home and family in the face of abuse and neglect.
Ellen is an only child who does not have a real home, even at the time when both her parents are still alive. Her father is " trash " and has a drinking problem , and the whole atmosphere is one of ... (Wikipedia)
The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
A journey through a web of intertwining stories, searching for the meaning of love.
Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the ... (Wikipedia)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (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)
Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
A darkly comic and philosophical exploration of art, sanity, and the nature of reality.
Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and ... (Wikipedia)
The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal journey of uncovering the truth of a mysterious organization.
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in the (fictional) northern Californian village of Kinneret, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey , ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
A lyrical exploration of the human condition, examining the innermost depths of the soul.
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, ... (Goodreads)
The Other
by Thomas Tryon
Twins Holland and Niles Perry grow up in a small town, but something sinister lurks in the woods.
Entranced and terrified, the reader of The Other is swept up in the life of a Connecticut country town in the thirties—and in the fearful mysteries that slowly darken and overwhelm it. Originally ... (Goodreads)
The Firebird
by Susanna Kearsley
A woman with psychic abilities is hired to authenticate a painting and uncovers a centuries-old mystery.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "I've loved every one of Susanna's books! She has bedrock research and a butterfly's delicate touch with characters—sure recipe for historical fiction that sucks you in ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Cider House Rules
by John Irving
A moral journey through the rural landscape of 1940s Maine, exploring issues of responsibility, family, and love.
Homer Wells grows up in an orphanage where he spends his childhood trying to be "of use" as a medical assistant to the director, Dr. Wilbur Larch, whose history is told in flashbacks : After a ... (Wikipedia)
Dead Reckoning
by Charlaine Harris
A supernatural detective investigates a case of dark magic as she navigates the hidden magical world.
Old friends and enemies are causing problems for Sookie Stackhouse . Sandra Pelt has a score to settle. Victor Madden, representative of the Vampire King Felipe de Castro, is challenging her lover ... (Wikipedia)
