Books like 'GraceLand'
Readers who enjoyed GraceLand by Chris Abani also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Storyteller's Secret: A Novel by Sejal Badani, Soneela Nankani
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsAn Amazon Charts, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller.From the bestselling author of Trail of Broken Wings comes an epic story of the unrelenting force of love, the power of healing, and the invincible desire to dream.Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic action-adventure adult -
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsAn alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic season-summer -
Hand Of Fate by Duane Boehm
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBestselling Western author Duane Boehm has written another western novel with enough humor, heartbreak, love, and outlaws to keep you turning the page.While the ranchers around Trinidad are circling like buzzards in wait for Flannery Vogel to fail, the downtrodden widow with a young daughter refuses to surrender as she struggles to run the ranch that cost her husband his life... -
The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBased on a remarkable true story of Taj Rowland. Seven-year-old Chellamuthu's life is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in India, sold to a Christian orphanage, and then adopted by an unsuspecting couple in the United States. It takes months before the boy can speak enough English to tell his parents that he already has a family back in India...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction realistic action-adventure audiobook book -
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The Rent Collector by Camron Wright
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsSurvival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic action-adventure audiobook book -
Hand Of Fate by Duane Boehm
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBestselling Western author Duane Boehm has written another western novel with enough humor, heartbreak, love, and outlaws to keep you turning the page.While the ranchers around Trinidad are circling like buzzards in wait for Flannery Vogel to fail, the downtrodden widow with a young daughter refuses to surrender as she struggles to run the ranch that cost her husband his life... -
Northern Borders: A Novel by Howard Frank Mosher
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA New York Times Notable A novel about growing up in a remote corner of Vermont, from the author Richard Russo calls “one of our very best writers... -
Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens, Kevin Stillwell
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe summer of 1976 is a turning point for 15-year-old Boady Sanden. He's managed to outrun and outwit the bullying seniors throughout his freshman year at St. Ignatius High; he's working multiple jobs for Wally Schenicker's construction company; and he finally makes a friend his own age--Thomas Elgin, son of the only black family on Boady's side of town... -
The People We Keep by Allison Larkin, Julia Whelan
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsListening Length 11 hours and 8 minutesThe People we Keep is about a young songwriter longing to find a home in the world.Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner... -
Small Country by Gaël Faye
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratings‘A luminous and poignant novel about childhood, war, exile and identity…this is literature at its most powerful’ Le Parisien Magazine Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expat neighbourhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister, Ana, is something close to paradise...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic 20th-century 21st-century -
A River Runs Through it and Other Stories by Norman Maclean, Annie Proulx
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsJust as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century... -
The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Sorrow of Angels is the second novel in an epic and elemental trilogy by the winner of the Icelandic Prize for Literature Jón Kalman Stefánsson, and the follow up to Heaven and Hell (publishing in paperback 3/11/15...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure book fiction historical -
Tuareg by Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Tuaregs are the true sons of the desert. They can survive in the harshest of conditions like nobody else. The noble inmouchar Gacel Sayah, is the master of a large extension of the desert. One day, two fugitives arrive from the north and Gacel, following his ancient and sacred hospitality laws, gives them shelter...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
The Reign Of Greed by José Rizal
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"El Filibusterismo" ("The Subversive") is the second novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), national hero of the Philippines. Like its predecessor, the better-known "Noli Me Tangere", the "Fili" was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university action-adventure adult book -
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The Color of Our Sky by Amita Trasi
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn the spirit of Khaled Hosseini, Nadia Hashimi and Shilpi Somaya Gowda comes this powerful debut from a talented new voice—a sweeping, emotional journey of two childhood friends in Mumbai, India, whose lives converge only to change forever one fateful night... -
Venom by Colin Falconer
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom Saigon to Paris, from Bangkok to the Ganges, this thriller is the story of Michel Christian. Abandoned on the streets of Saigon when he is only a child, he grows up with a fatal attraction for women and an insatiable desire for revenge... -
To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis classic schoolroom drama of a black teacher in London's tough East End who triumphs over bigotry and ignorance to change the lives of his students forever was hailed by the "New York Times" as "a book that the reader devours quickly, ponders slowly, and forgets not at all"With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot...Categorized as:
black-mc coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic 20th-century -
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts...Categorized as:
black-mc coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic university -
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway, John Hemingway
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTHE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic university 20th-century -
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Diviners is the culmination and completion of Margaret Laurence's Manawaka cycle.This is the powerful story of an independent woman who refuses to abandon her search for love. For Morag Gunn, growing up in a small Canadian prairie town is a toughening process – putting distance between herself and a world that wanted no part of her... -
Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the author of The Bamboo Stalk and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 21st-century action-adventure adult -
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFollowing All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought.In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic university -
Almost to Freedom by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLindy and her doll Sally are best friends - wherever Lindy goes, Sally stays right by her side. They eat together, sleep together, and even pick cotton together. So, on the night Lindy and her mama run away in search of freedom, Sally goes too. This young girl's rag doll vividly narrates her enslaved family's courageous escape through the Underground Railroad...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction poc-mc realistic action-adventure book children children-books -
An Instant in the Wind by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas's final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master's vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother's funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
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Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In Murambi, The Book of Bones, Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy...Categorized as:
historical-fiction university dark literary-fiction fiction 21st-century historical journey -
Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsRinggold recounts the dream adventure of eight-year-old Cassie Louise Lightfoot, who flies above her apartment-building rooftop, the 'tar beach' of the title, looking down on 1939 Harlem. Part autobiographical, part fictional, this allegorical tale sparkles with symbolic and historical references central to African-American culture. The spectacular artwork resonates with color and texture...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction poc-mc realistic season-summer action-adventure book children -
Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of Yellow Crocus comes a heart-wrenching story about finding strength in a new world. Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife—a paper wife.On the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic season-summer abuse -
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsA 2012 Michael L. Printz Honor BookCharlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie's help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie follows him into the night...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic season-summer -
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwo extraordinary Indigenous stories set five generations apart. When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc fiction historical family poc-author journey -
Queen of Clubs by Beezy Marsh
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLondon, 1957: After rising up against gangland’s queen, Alice Diamond, formerly downtrodden Nell is living the perfect life of crime. Far from the East End slums where she was raised, she’s now an accomplished professional thief by day—lifting luxury goods from high-end department stores—and a glamorous nightclub owner after dark...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime drama coming-of-age literary-fiction fiction audiobook mystery -
Comanche Woman by Joan Johnston
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe son of a white father and a Comanche mother, Long Quiet has long loved Bayleigh Stewart, the daughter of the wealthiest cotton planter in Texas, and has searched for years for the beauty, abducted by marauders, until he rescues her from her captors... -
Les Caprices d'un astre by Antoine Laurain
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsXavier Lemercier, agent immobilier, trouve au hasard d'une visite d'appartement un mystérieux télescope ayant appartenu à un célèbre astronome. Voilà bientôt qu'il cadre dans l'instrument, depuis son balcon, une femme derrière une fenêtre, sans oser, bien sûr, l'aborder. Divorcé et esseulé, avec pour seules joies ses week-ends avec son jeune fils, il commence à tomber amoureux de l'inconnue...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc romance fiction audiobook historical journey -
Olivia, Mourning by Yael Politis
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHistorical Fiction (USA 1840s) Available on Amazon in eBook and paperback. Newly orphaned and forced to live with her brother and the overbearing woman who will soon be his wife, Olivia Killion is determined to gain her independence by inheriting 80 acres of farmland in far off Michigan...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction action-adventure book family fiction historical -
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Tommo and Hawk by Bryce Courtenay
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBrutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of fifteen in Hobart. Together they escape their troubled pasts and set off on a journey into manhood...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult audiobook book family -
Black Betty by Walter Mosley
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings1961: For most black Americans, these were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins, Los Angeles's mean streets were never meaner...or more deadly...Categorized as:
black-mc crime historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc university action-adventure adult -
Tandia by Bryce Courtenay
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTandia sat waiting anxiously for the fight to begin between the man she loved the most in the world and the man she hated the most in the world.Tandia is a child of Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only sixteen when she is first brutalised by the police. Her fear of the white man leads her to join the black resistance movement, where she trains as a terrorist... -
Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe summer of 1963 begins like any other for nine-year-old Starla Claudelle. Born to teenage parents in Mississippi, Starla is being raised by a strict paternal grandmother, Mamie, whose worst fear is that Starla will turn out like her mother...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic season-summer -
Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, Gary Issacs
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom Pulitzer Prize finalist Linda Hogan, Solar Storms tells the moving, “luminous” (Publishers Weekly) story of Angela Jenson, a troubled Native American girl coming of age in the foster system in Oklahoma, who decides to reunite with her family... -
The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSpanning India in the 70s to New Mexico in the 80s to Seattle in the 90s, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing is a winning, irreverent debut novel about a family wrestling with its future and its past... -
Great Novels of Charles Dickens by Charles Dickens
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsCharles Dickens (1812 - 1870) is acknowledged as one of the giants of world literature. Collected here in one glorious volume are two of his best know and most highly thought of novels.A Tale of Two Cities is a violent romance which pitches a brilliant but drunken lawyer and the descendant of a sadistic French aristocrat into the turmoil of the French Revolution...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic action-adventure audiobook book -
Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA marvelous first novel, about growing up gay in Sri Lanka...from a brilliant new writer whose next book cannot arrive here quickly enough (Kirkus Reviews)...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic university 20th-century -
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive...Categorized as:
crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA stunning literary debut of two young women on opposing sides of the devastating Sri Lankan Civil War—winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize for Asia, longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize Before violence tore apart the tapestry of Sri Lanka and turned its pristine beaches red, there were two families... -
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Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFor fans of THE KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hossein and Yasmin Khadra's THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL, a devastating tale of forbidden love between an Englishwoman and a Kabul warlord.The Taliban have disappeared from Kabul's streets, but the long shadows of their brutal regime remain... -
White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic university action-adventure adult animals -
Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the naval academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói, overlooking the ocean...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult book fiction -
Deadwood by Pete Dexter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards...Categorized as:
crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Немили-недраги by Ivan Vazov, Иван Вазов
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult book classics fiction -
Again to Carthage by John L. Parker Jr.
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJohn L. Parker, Jr.’s first novel, Once a Runner, is the cult novel for runners. Self-published in the late 1970s, and for years sold out of the trunk of the author’s car at running events, it went on to sell over 100,000 copies and achieve legendary status among runners.It perfectly captured the intensity, relentlessness, and sheer lunacy of a serious miler’s life...Categorized as:
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