Books like 'Them'
Readers who enjoyed Them by Joyce Carol Oates also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century classics literary-fiction historical-fiction crime drama family coming-of-age urban
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The Fortress by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA novel on 18th century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule, featuring a soldier returned from the wars. A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail... -
Żelazny kaganek by Димитър Талев
Rated: 4.37 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsPowieść przedstawia losy macedońskiego rodu Głauszewów. Akcja powieści rozpoczyna się w połowie lat 30. XIX w. Stojan Głauszew, zabiwszy psa, który należał do lokalnego wielmoży tureckiego, w obawie przed jego gniewem decyduje się na ucieczkę ze wsi. Osiada w pobliskim mieście Prespa, gdzie poznaje Sułtanę, kobietę zaradną, silną i energiczną...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker, Marion Meade
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe second revision in sixty years, this sublime collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.For this new twenty-first-century edition, devoted admirers can be sure to find their favorite verse and stories. But a variety of fresh material has also been added to create a fuller, more authentic picture of her life's work... -
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe forty-seven stories in this collection, selected by Singer himself out of nearly one hundred and fifty, range from the publication of his now-classic first collection, Gimpel the Fool, in 1957, until 1981...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies -
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Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsKinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics family literary-fiction fiction historical 20th-century politics -
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...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century book -
Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPorter Osborne Jr. is a precocious, sensitive, and rambunctious boy trying to make it through adolescence during the depression years. On a red-clay farm in Georgia he learns all there is to know about cotton chopping, hog killing, watermelon thumping, and mule handling. School provides a quick course in practical joking, schoolboy crushes, athletic glory, and clandestine sex...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century animals -
Recollections of Things to Come by Elena Garro
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis remarkable first novel depicts life in the small Mexican town of Ixtepec during the grim days of the Revolution. The town tells its own story against a variegated background of political change, religious persecution, and social unrest. Miss Garro, who has also won a high reputation as a playwright, is a masterly storyteller...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book female-author -
The Boy Who Granted Dreams by Luca Di Fulvio
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratings1909. Ellis Island. Arriving off one of the many transatlantic freighters are Cetta Luminita and her illegitimate baby boy Natale, fleeing the poverty and violence of their Southern Italian hometown. Having sacrificed everything, and endured every possible shame, Cetta has but one wish: that her baby should be an American, and grow up with the freedom to decide his own destiny... -
The Complete Saki by Saki
Rated: 4.37 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHector Hugh Munro is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's "golden afternoon''--those slow and peaceful years prior to the outbreak of World War I. The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language... -
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars... -
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings by Daniil Kharms, Matvei Yankelevich
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDaniil Kharms has long been heralded as one of the most iconoclastic writers of the Soviet era, but the full breadth of his achievement is only in recent years, following the opening of Kharms' archives, being recognized internationally... -
Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFortress Besieged is a classic of world literature, a masterpiece of parodic fiction that plays with Western literary traditions, philosophy and middle class Chinese society in the Republican era. The title is taken from an old French proverb, "Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out"... -
The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the final years of his prominent life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces. The poignant 'The Lady with the Little Dog' and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage - its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies -
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Complete Stories by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Dave Eggers
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFeaturing five never-before-published Vonnegut stories!Here for the first time is the complete short fiction of one of the twentieth century’s foremost imaginative geniuses. More than half of Vonnegut’s output was short fiction, and never before has the world had occasion to wrestle with it all together... -
The Plays of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsEnglish translations of Chekhov's classic plays by a Russian-language scholar who is also a veteran Chekhovian actor... -
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBertie Wooster vows that nothing will induce him to return to Totleigh Towers, lair of former magistrate Sir Watkyn Bassett. Apart from Sir Watkyn himself, the place is infested with his ghastly daughter Madeline and her admirer, would-be dictator Roderick Spode. But when his old friend 'Stinker' Pinker asks for Bertie's help, there is nothing for it but to buckle down and go there... -
Selected Stories by O. Henry
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Selected Stories of O. Henry," by O. Henry, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"" "series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure anthologies -
Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsRich Man, Poor Man is the story of two brothers whose contrasting natures reflect the turmoil of post-war America. Rudy is the rich man - a romantic who would let no one stand between him and success. Tom is the poor man - the black sheep of the family on the run from his violent past... -
Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth by Thomas Wolfe
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe sequel to Thomas Wolfe's remarkable first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River is one of the great classics of American literature. The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from small-town North Carolina to the wider world of Harvard University, New York City, and Europe... -
Madame by Antoni Libera
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher. Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber, Michael J. Rosen
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"An authentic American genius. . . . Mr. Thurber belongs in the great lines of American humorists that includes Mark Twain and Ring Lardner." --Philadelphia InquirerJames Thurber’s unique ability to convey the vagaries of life in a funny, witty, and often satirical way earned him accolades as one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century... -
The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories by O. Henry
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHere are sixteen of the best stories by one of America's most popular storytellers. For nearly a century, the work of O. Henry has delighted readers with its humor, irony and colorful, real-life settings. The writer's own life had more than a touch of color and irony...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies audiobook -
My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA teenage boy makes the mistake of falling in love with the much-protected daughter of his uncle, mischievously nicknamed after his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, the curmudgeonly self-appointed patriarch of a large and extended Iranian family in 1940s Tehran...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century -
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The Immigrants by Howard Fast
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn a passionate, multigenerational novel set against the backdrop of San Francisco, the son of an Italian fisherman struggles from the rubble of the great earthquake to build a shipping empire. Reprint... -
Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis landmark novella—one of the central texts of Mexican literature, is eerily relevant to our current dark times—offers a child’s-eye view of a society beset by dictators, disease, and natural disasters, set in “the year of polio, foot-and-mouth disease, floods...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction drama coming-of-age literary-fiction urban romance fiction -
Selected Stories by O. Henry
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsO. Henry originated the humorous, energetic tale that ends with an ironic, even shocking twist. In "After Twenty Years," for example, two boys agree to meet at a particular spot exactly twenty years later. Both are faithful, but in the intervening years one boy has turned into a criminal, the other into a policeman...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure anthologies -
The Valley Of Decision by Marcia Davenport
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOn the eve of World War II writer Marcia Davenport, best known for her biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, spent several years in Pittsburgh, her imagination caught by the drama of American industry. In 1942, Charles Scribner’s sons published her Pittsburgh novel, The Valley of Decision... -
Nervous People and Other Satires by Mikhail Zoshchenko
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTypical targets of Zoshchenko's satire are the Soviet bureaucracy, crowded conditions in communal apartments, marital infidelities and the rapid turnover in marriage partners, and "the petty-bourgeois mode of life, with its adulterous episodes, lying, and similar nonsense... -
The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality... -
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis fine, somber novel, by the author of the widely acclaimed The Lost Steps, deals with the French Revolution, chiefly in the Caribbean...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult bildungsroman book -
All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsScarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat... -
A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJulius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome. Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather’s ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book -
Climates by André Maurois
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWritten in 1928 by French biographer and novelist Andre Maurois, Climates became a best seller in France and all over Europe. The first 100,000 copies printed of its Russian translation sold out the day they appeared in Moscow bookstores... -
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Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng, Peter Zinoman
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBanned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck--by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung--is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuan... -
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 . . -
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMitford's most famous novels, "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a Cold Climate," satirize British aristocracy in the '20s and '30s through the amorous adventures of the Radletts, an exuberantly unconventional family closely modeled on Mitford's own...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire -
Babbitt & Main Street: Two Classic American Books by Sinclair Lewis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratings• Two of American author Sinclair Lewis' novels are in this Kindle eBook: Babbitt & Main Street Babbitt (1922) Babbitt is at its heart a satire of American society. It was an immediate hit and helped Babbitt win the Nobel Prize in literature. Main Street Another satire, this time involving small town life in America...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century anthologies christian -
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 family coming-of-age literary-fiction fiction audiobook -
The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsO'Connor's 1956 account of big-city politics, inspired by the career of longtime Boston Mayor James M. Curley, portrays its Irish-American political boss as a demagogue and a rogue who nonetheless deeply understands his constituents. The book was later made into a John Ford film staring Spencer Tracy... -
The Manor by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis novel portrays the difficulties encountered by traditionalist Jews coming to terms with the social changes that rocked Poland in the late 19th century. The central figure of the novel is Calman Jacoby, who stands between the old and the new, unable to embrace either whole-heartedly...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction family fiction historical 20th-century book -
Call If You Need Me by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen he died in August 1988, Raymond Carver had just published what were thought to be his last stories in the collection entitled Elephant and his own collection of stories, Where I'm Calling from... -
U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money by John Dos Passos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the novels that make up the U.S.A.trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A... -
The Mammy by Brendan O'Carroll
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Mammy" is what Irish children call their mothers and The Mammy is Agnes Browne--a widow struggling to raise seven children in a North Dublin neighborhood in the 1960s. Popular Irish comedian Brendan O'Carroll chronicles the comic misadventures of this large and lively family with raw humor and great affection... -
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You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGeorge Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult -
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe New York Times called Sir Edward Feathers one of the most memorable characters in modern literature. A lyrical novel that recalls his fully lived life, Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat... -
The Mother by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWithin this novel Ms. Buck paints the portrait of a poor woman living in a remote village whose joys are few and hardships are many. As the ancient traditions, which she bases her philosophies upon, begin to collide with the new ideals of the communist era, this peasant woman must find a balance between them and deal with the consequences... -
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... -
Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis, Edward Everett Tanner III
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWildly successful when it was first published in 1955, Patrick Dennis' Auntie Mame sold over two million copies and stayed put on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks. It was made into a play, a Broadway as well as a Hollywood musical, and a fabulous movie starring Rosalind Russell...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire urban -
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster...
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