Books like 'All the Pretty Horses'
Readers who enjoyed All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsFrom the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war IrelandCyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be...Categorized as:
bildungsroman classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic -
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 63 ratingsLibrarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found hereIt is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic -
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsBased on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours. Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival 20th-century -
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival university -
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This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsIn the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to Odie O’Banion, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent’s wrath...Categorized as:
bildungsroman classics coming-of-age crime drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction -
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsMemphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival -
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsWhile the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known January 30, 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army...Categorized as:
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The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s AmericaIn June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter...Categorized as:
bildungsroman coming-of-age crime drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic -
Kane & Abel by Jeffrey Archer
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBorn on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world, both men are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. These two men -- ambitious, powerful, ruthless -- are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fuelled by their all-consuming hatred...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 91 ratingsBarcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written... -
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsAn alternate cover for this ASIN can be found here.In an enthralling new historical novel from national bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption. 1947...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival -
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsFrom the author of Me Before You, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England... -
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER For readers of "The Nightingale" and "Sarah s Key, " inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades. New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival -
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAn Alabama boy’s innocence is shaken by murder and madness in the 1960s South in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Swan Song. It’s 1964 in idyllic Zephyr, Alabama. People either work for the paper mill up the Tecumseh River, or for the local dairy. It’s a simple life, but it stirs the impressionable imagination of twelve-year-old aspiring writer Cory Mackenson...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age crime drama friendship gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction -
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The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome stories live forever . . .Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship... -
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 86 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsDuring the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age crime dark drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction -
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 87 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsIn their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival 20th-century -
The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA novel you will never forget... This powerful and breathtaking novel is the story of four cadets who have become bloodbrothers. Together they will encounter the hell of hazing and the rabid, raunchy and dangerously secretive atmosphere of an arrogant and proud military institute. They will experience the violence. The passion. The rage. The friendship. The loyalty. The betrayal...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship gothic high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction -
Centennial by James A. Michener
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 31 ratings"Michener is America's best writer, and he proves it once again in CENTENNIAL."THE PITTSBURGH PRESSA stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener could bring to stunning life...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction outdoors western 20th-century -
Mila 18 by Leon Uris
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIt was a time of crisis, a time of tragedy and a time of transcendent courage and determination. Leon Uris's novel is set in the midst of the ghetto uprising that defied Nazi tyranny, as the Jews of Warsaw boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists...Categorized as:
classics drama high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWith a “knack for romantic tension and page-turning suspense, this one is a winner.” The year 1920 comes in with a roar in this rousing and suspenseful New York Times bestselling novel by Sandra Brown. Prohibition is the new law of the land, but murder, mayhem, lust, and greed are already institutions in the Moonshine Capitol of Texas (Booklist, starred review)...Categorized as:
crime dark historical-fiction industrial-era western 20th-century action-adventure adult -
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...Categorized as:
bildungsroman coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival -
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Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsParis, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic survival -
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 89 ratingsIn this beloved story, readers travel with Mary Lennox, a spoiled and sullen orphan, from colonial India to Misselthwaite Manor, a forbidding estate on the Yorkshire moors. There, in the unlikeliest of places, Mary discovers and helps restore an abandoned garden and, in the process, blossoms herself into a creature of loving kindness...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction outdoors -
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThe #1 New York Times Bestseller“A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Beautiful...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic -
Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsSent in 1910 to live with distant relatives who own a rubber plantation along the Amazon River, English orphan Maia is excited. She believes she is in for brightly colored macaws, enormous butterflies, and "curtains of sweetly scented orchids trailing from the trees." Her British classmates warn her of man-eating alligators and wild, murderous Indians...Categorized as:
animals classics coming-of-age friendship historical-fiction outdoors realistic 20th-century -
Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOrdered to hold an abandoned army post, John Dunbar found himself alone, beyond the edge of civilization. Thievery and survival soon forced him into the Indian camp, where he began a dangerous adventure that changed his life forever. Relive the adventure and beauty of the incredible movie, Dances with Wolves...Categorized as:
animals classics drama historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction realistic western -
Chesapeake by James A. Michener
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOnce again James A. Michener brings history to life with this 400-year saga of America's great bay and its Eastern Shore. Following Edmund Steed and his remarkable family, who parallel the settling and forming of the nation, CHESAPEAKE sweeps readers from the unspoiled world of the Native Americans to the voyages of Captain John Smith, the Revolutionary War, and right up to modern times... -
Sackett by Louis L'Amour
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA drifter by circumstance, William Tell Sackett hungered for a place he couldn’t name but knew he had to find. South of the Tetons, through a keyhole pass, he found it: a lonely yet beautiful valley—with a fortune in gold. Then he found an even greater treasure: Ange Kerry, a courageous and resourceful woman... -
The Hound of the Baskervilles: A Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsCould the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And immersed in another case, he sends Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects close at hand...Categorized as:
animals classics crime gothic high-school historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction -
Sackett's Land by Louis L'Amour, John Curless
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAfter discovering six gold Roman coins buried in the mud of the Devil’s Dyke, Barnabas Sackett enthusiastically invests in goods that he will offer for trade in America. But Sackett has a powerful enemy: Rupert Genester, nephew of an earl, wants him dead. A battlefield promise made to Sackett’s father threatens Genester’s inheritance... -
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsA lost child: On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her - but has disappeared without a trace. A terrible secret: On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell Andrews learns a secret that will change her life forever...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship gothic historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction realistic -
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True Grit by Charles Portis
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsFourteen-year-old Mattie Ross' father was shot and killed. Told through her eyes, True Grit is the story of how she and hard-drinking Marshal Rooster Cogburn set out to find and prosecute his murderer. "An epic and a legend".--Washington Post...Categorized as:
bildungsroman classics coming-of-age crime drama high-school historical-fiction industrial-era -
Pereira Declares: A Testimony by Antonio Tabucchi
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsDr. Pereira is an aging, overweightjournalist who has failed to noticethe menacing cloud of fascism overSalazarist Portugal, until one day hemeets an aspiring young writer andanti-fascist. Breaking out of his apolitical torpor, Pereira reluctantly rises to heroism...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure -
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsCould the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And immersed in another case, he sends Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects close at hand...Categorized as:
animals classics crime gothic high-school historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction -
The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBarcelona, 1957. It is Christmas, and Daniel Sempere and his wife Bea have much to celebrate. They have a beautiful new baby son named Julian, and their close friend Fermín Romero de Torres is about to be wed. But their joy is eclipsed when a mysterious stranger visits the Sempere bookshop and threatens to divulge a terrible secret that has been buried for two decades in the city's dark past... -
The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRobin was always wandering off (her mother's words) to get away from the confusion she felt inside her. It was not until Robin's father found a permanent job at the McCurdy ranch, after three years as a migrant worker, that Robin had a place to wander to... -
The Box-Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsThe Boxcar Children is a children's literary franchise originally created and written by American writer and first-grade school teacher,[1] Gertrude Chandler Warner. Today, the series includes well over 100 titles. The series is aimed at readers in grades 2-6...Categorized as:
animals classics coming-of-age friendship historical-fiction realistic survival 20th-century -
The Woman with the Blue Star by Pam Jenoff, Sanna Majuri
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratings1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction survival 20th-century -
Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west...Categorized as:
animals bildungsroman classics coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction industrial-era -
Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen Michael is washed up on an island in the Pacific after falling from his parent's yacht, the Peggy Sue, he struggles to survive on his own. But he soon realises there is someone close by, someone who is watching over him and helping him to stay alive...Categorized as:
animals classics coming-of-age friendship historical-fiction outdoors realistic survival -
Il giardino delle nebbie notturne by Tan Twan Eng
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsMalaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction outdoors survival 20th-century -
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Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsRose Justice is a young pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. On her way back from a semi-secret flight in the waning days of the war, Rose is captured by the Germans and ends up in Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi women's concentration camp...Categorized as:
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Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime dark drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century -
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsIn this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison created a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances of black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in contemporary fiction... -
Hollow Out the Dark by James Wade
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAward-winning author James Wade blends atmospheric prose with soul-stirring themes in Hollow Out the Dark, a gothic adventure set against a Depression-era landscape where a whiskey war threatens to decimate a small Texas town.A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime dark gothic southern-gothic literary-fiction western industrial-era -
Tregaron's Daughter by Madeleine Brent
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsExcitement, drama and suspense were only part of Cadi Tregaron's new life. It had been a sunny afternoon when she glanced from the cliff where she sat reading and saw below her in the sea a sight that would change her life...Categorized as:
classics gothic historical-fiction industrial-era 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
The Lost Girl of Astor Street by Stephanie Morrill
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLydia has vanished. Lydia, who’s never broken any rules, except falling in love with the wrong boy. Lydia, who’s been Piper’s best friend since they were children. Lydia, who never even said good-bye. Convinced the police are looking in all the wrong places, eighteen-year-old Piper Sail begins her own investigation in an attempt to solve the mystery of Lydia’s disappearance...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime dark friendship high-school historical-fiction realistic 20th-century
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