Books like 'Incognito'
Readers who enjoyed Incognito by Nick Payne also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Girl Behind the Gates by Brenda Davies
Rated: 4.54 of 5 stars · 24 ratings1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future - until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labelled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her.1981... -
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsAvailable in English for the first time, this best-selling Turkish classic of love and alienation in a changing world captures the vibrancy of interwar Berlin. A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin...Categorized as:
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Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTime Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life... -
Spark of Life: A Novel of Resistance by Erich Maria Remarque
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSPARK OF LIFE509 is a political prisoner in a German concentration camp. For ten years, he has persevered in the most hellish conditions. Deathly weak, he still has his wits about him and he senses that the end of the war is near. If he and the other living corpses in his barracks can hold on for liberation--or force their own--then their suffering will not have been in vain... -
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When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn 19th-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era.Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him... -
The Orphans of Berlin by Jina Bacarr
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA heartbreaking World War 2 novel that tells the story of two women’s fight for love, family and hope, as the world crumbles around them. Based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue from Nazi-occupied Europe.Berlin, 1936. The Landau family are at the heart of their community, running a music shop in Berlin and just trying to survive... -
Death Is My Trade by Robert Merle
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe story begins in 1913, when Rudolf Lang is 13 years old. His parents give him a harsh catholic education, which is very badly accepted by Rudolf. His unstable father, with whom the young Lang has an awkward relationship, wants Rudolf to become priest. At the age of fifteen, Lang starts his military career which eventually leads him to the post of commandant of Auschwitz in 1943...Categorized as:
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The Key by Kathryn Hughes
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the #1 bestselling author of The Letter Kathryn Hughes comes The Key, an unforgettable story of a heartbreaking secret that will stay with you for ever. 'Riveting' Lesley Pearse on The Letter. 'Gripping' Good Housekeeping on The Secret. 1956 It's Ellen Crosby's first day at work as a student nurse at Ambergate County Lunatic Asylum... -
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name... -
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics comedy -
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Grapes of Wrath / The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary family -
Short Stories From Rabindranath Tagore by Rabindranath Tagore
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe sixteen short stories collected here were written between 1891 and 1917 by the Bengali poet, writer, painter, musician and mystic, Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Throughout these stories, Tagore's main interest is people and the kaleidoscope of human emotions, as men and women struggle with the restrictions and prohibitions of contemporary Hindu society... -
Honeysuckle Season by Mary Ellen Taylor
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom bestselling author Mary Ellen Taylor comes a story about profound loss, hard truths, and an overgrown greenhouse full of old secrets.Adrift in the wake of her father’s death, a failed marriage, and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it’s also a distraction from her profound pain... -
The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRecommended reading as part of the Chief of Naval Operation's Professional Reading Program!This now-classic novel by Richard McKenna enjoyed great critical acclaim and commercial success when it was first published in 1962... -
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Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIt is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham," wrote Gore Vidal. "He was always so entirely there." Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom... -
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the short story... -
The Woman in the Wood by Lesley Pearse
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFifteen-year-old twins Maisy and Duncan Mitcham have always had each other. Until the fateful day in the wood . . . One night in 1960, the twins awake to find their father pulling their screaming mother from the house. She is to be committed to an asylum. It is, so their father insists, for her own good... -
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBased on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art...Categorized as:
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Qb VII by Leon Uris
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsIn Queen’s Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust—born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration Camp was the site of his family’s extermination—Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga’s most sadistic inmate/doctors... -
Immortality by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis breathtaking, reverberating survey of human nature finds Kundera still attempting to work out the meaning of life, without losing his acute sense of humour. It is one of those great unclassifiable masterpieces that appear once every twenty years or so.'It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that... -
Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis story of distorted passion and behaviour reveals the unrequited love of a woman for a man who cares so little for her that he fails to recognize her as she obsessively pursues him. Also included is The Fowler Snared, sharing a similar theme, only it is the man whose passion is unrequited... -
The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, Rajendra A. Chitnis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings“The devil’s neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist.”—Giovanni Papini It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and pervades this tragicomic novel of anxiety and evil set amid the horrors of World War II... -
The Seven Year Dress by Paulette Mahurin
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOne of the darkest times in human history was the insane design and execution to rid the world of Jews and “undesirables.” At the hands of the powerful evil madman Adolf Hitler, families were ripped apart and millions were slaughtered. Persecution, torture, devastation, and enduring the unthinkable remained for those who lived. This is the story of one woman who lived to tell her story... -
Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGoing to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, “aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . . -
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Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is a novel by the author of Hold Tight... -
London Belles by Annie Groves
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLondon Belles is a tale of four very different young women thrown together by war. Finding freedom and independence – as well as love, passion and heartbreak – for the very first time, a unique bond is formed as the hostilities take their toll on Britain. Four lives. One war that will change them all. When tragedy strikes, Olive is forced to seek lodgers...Categorized as:
historical-fiction medical 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book family -
The Ogre by Michel Tournier
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Ogre is a masterful tale of innocence, perversion, and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn, taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum... -
My Mother's Shadow by Nikola Scott
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAddie thinks she knows everything about her mother. But when a stranger appears claiming to be her sister, she realises that her life so far has been a lie. But why? Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Santa Montefiore. Hartland House has always been a faithful keeper of secrets...1958... -
The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. "We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day... -
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger...Categorized as:
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Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction 20th-century book classics contemporary existentialism family -
Caligula by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsa new adaptation of Camus' 1944 play by Scottish playwright David...Categorized as:
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The Lobotomist's Wife by Samantha Greene Woodruff
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn enthralling historical novel of a compassionate and relentless woman, a cutting-edge breakthrough in psychiatry, and a nightmare in the making.Since her brother took his life after WWI, Ruth Emeraldine has had one goal: to help those suffering from mental illness. Then she falls in love with charismatic Robert Apter—a brilliant doctor championing a radical new treatment, the lobotomy... -
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY BESTSELLEROn a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously... -
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The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people... -
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, Luisa Geisler
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn her most ambitious work to date, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker -- the child, the woman, the fated celebrity and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe... -
A Heart So White by Javier Marías
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know...Categorized as:
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The Dead by James Joyce
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOften cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, "The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce... -
So Big by Edna Ferber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAuthor Edna Ferber described the story of So Big as being about a "material man, son of his earth-grubbing, idealistic mother". Left an orphan at 19 years old in the late 1880s, Selina Peake needs to support herself. She leaves the city life she has known to become a teacher in the farming community of High Prairie, IL... -
Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDuring the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians and Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army... -
Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics contemporary -
The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBryce Courtenays latest novel , The Persimmon Tree, is a big sweeping saga, set among the Pacific Islands and in the Indian Ocean. In the style of Jame Clavell and Jame Michener, it tells the very personal and often romantic stories of men and women caught up in much larger events - in this case starting with the Japanese invasion of Java and the Dutch exodus of the region...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline... -
The Survivors by Kate Furnivall
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiscover a brilliant story of love, danger, courage and betrayal, from the internationally bestselling author of The Betrayal.Germany, 1945. The Allied Military Government has set up Displaced Persons camps throughout war-ravaged Germany, to house the millions of devastated people throughout Europe who have lost everything. Klara Janowska is one of these... -
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The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy... -
Splendor in the Grass by adapted from the screenplay by William Inge F. Andrew Leslie, William Inge
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsF. Andrew Leslie, adapted from the screenplay by William Inge, Inge, William, Leslie, F...Categorized as:
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The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsSet in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic... -
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London... -
The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet in France during the days immediately before World War II, this is the story of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy obsessed with the idea of freedom. Translated from the French by Eric Sutton... -
Amok by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOn a sweltering ocean-liner traveling from India to Europe a passenger tells his story--the tale of a doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his duty and the pull of his emotions; a tale of power and maddening desire, of pride, shame, and a headlong flight into folly.'Amok' is one of the most intense and incisive of the tales that brought Stefan Zweig worldwide fame...
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