Books like 'Foreign Affairs'
Readers who enjoyed Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary romance 20th century literary-fiction humor classics female-mc drama university satire
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My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsFifty years after its first publication, the multimillion-copy international bestseller is available again in English, sharing the heartbreaking tale of a gifted, mischievous, direly misunderstood boy growing up in Rio de Janeiro.When the precocious Zeze grows up, he wants to be a poet in a bow tie... -
![100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda]()
100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAgainst the backdrop of Isla Negra - the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific - the poet sets the poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love is Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, the poet's 'beloved wife'... -
![Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado]()
Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsLiving by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children -
![Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings]()
Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's biographer, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets. Also featured are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published... -
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![The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks]()
The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsIra Levinson is in trouble. At ninety-one years old, in poor health and alone in the world, he finds himself stranded on an isolated embankment after a car crash. Suffering multiple injuries, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes and comes into focus beside him: his beloved wife Ruth, who passed away nine years ago... -
![Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos]()
Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA vivid chronicle of the solitary life of a peasant family in a harsh and unforgiving land, austerely told by a classic Brazilian writer... -
![What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver]()
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsAlternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark... -
![Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry]()
Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAn Oscar-winning story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter who find the courage and humor to live through life's hazards and to love each other as never before. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove created two characters who won the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere--Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma... -
![Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher]()
Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHer captivating bestseller of loss and the healing power of love now re-issued with a stunning new jacket look. Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in the pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog Horace and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence... -
![The Truce by Mario Benedetti]()
The Truce by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.' Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary, and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people generally do... -
![Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart]()
Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsLoudmouthed, redheaded Cee Cee Bloom has her sights set on Hollywood. Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean... -
![Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig]()
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 Corsican Woman by Madge Swindells]()
The Corsican Woman by Madge Swindells
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSybilia turned as if sleepwalking and, trance-like, walked down the stone steps to the living room. She shuddered as she took the rifle from the peg on the wall, but after only a moment's hesitation, she loaded it and went outside. Sybilia Rocca is beautiful, gentle and intelligent...Categorized as:
drama literary-fiction female-mc romance contemporary historical-fiction fiction war -
![Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado]()
Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt thirteen Tereza is sold by her aunt to a ranch owner who treats her like a piece of property, and sexually abuses her. When caught in bed with her lover she defends herself against the ranch owner’s violence with a knife and ends up in jail. Freed by a long-time admirer, she eventually ends up in a brothel... -
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![Wild Chicks by Cornelia Funke]()
Wild Chicks by Cornelia Funke
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe series that launched Cornelia Funke as one of the most beloved authors in German, THE WILD CHICKS is a middle-grades to YA series about a group of German girls who form the eponymous “Wild Chicks” gang... -
![Shadowed Paths by Ivan Bunin]()
Shadowed Paths by Ivan Bunin
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe collection consists of the best of his early works - Sukhodol, The Last Rendezvous, Apple Fragrance, The Gentleman from San Francisco - and stories written in his last years - Leka, Sunstroke, Shadowed Paths, and others. They may be called stories about love and about the unforgettable Russian landscape. For here, Bunin writes about himself, in the hushed stillness of the fields..Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction historical-fiction -
![Flight Patterns by Karen White]()
Flight Patterns by Karen White
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe New York Times bestselling author of the Tradd Street novels tells the story of a woman coming home to the family she left behind—and to the woman she always wanted to be.... Georgia Chambers has spent her life sifting through other people’s pasts while trying to forget her own... -
![Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov]()
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsPublished two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction university 20th-century adult alternate-history audiobook -
![Ask the Dust by John Fante]()
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAsk the Dust is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young Italian-American writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . -
![Los árboles mueren de pie by Alejandro Casona]()
Los árboles mueren de pie by Alejandro Casona
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAlejandro Casona plays with fantasy and reality in his plays. Here we are in play within the play, not in the Pirandellian way but as orchestrating elements of the vaudeville. This work offers a world of fantasy and characters who exemplify a moral idea. They intended to show the viewer the good, beautiful life in its most genuine, kind and wonderful expression... -
![Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts]()
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsTalk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change... -
![Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins]()
Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNineteen-year-old Harold Chasen is obsessed with death. He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life... -
![Betty Blue by Philippe Djian]()
Betty Blue by Philippe Djian
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis is a full-fledged lovers' tragedy between a drifter-turned-writer and the fatally flawed Betty, his muse and obsessive promoter... -
![Her Lover by Albert Cohen]()
Her Lover by Albert Cohen
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHandsome, worldly, and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary dark-academia fiction -
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![A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams]()
A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTennessee Williams’s sensuous, atmospheric plays transformed the American stage with their passion, exoticism and vibrant characters who rage against their personal demons and the modern world... -
![São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos]()
São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPaulo Honório is a sometime field hand who has kicked and clawed and schemed his way to prosperity, becoming master of the decrepit estate São Bernardo, where once upon a time he toiled. He is ruthless in his exploitation of his fellow man, but when he makes a match with a fine young woman, he is surprised to discover that this latest acquisition, as he sees it, may be somewhat harder to handle... -
![Către frumusețe by David Foenkinos, Daniel Nicolescu]()
Către frumusețe by David Foenkinos, Daniel Nicolescu
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings„Dacă nu ar părea tocit de atâta folosire, aș fi ales drept motto al romanului meu acest adagiu al lui Dostoievski: «Frumusețea va salva lumea»“, mărturisea David Foenkinos într-un interviu... -
![Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson]()
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWritten on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book... -
![Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver]()
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 53 ratings"Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach...Categorized as:
classics drama female-mc humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals -
![Doctors by Erich Segal]()
Doctors by Erich Segal
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWriting with all the passion of "Love Story" and power of "The Class," Erich Segal sweeps us into the lives of the Harvard Medical School's class of 1962. His stunning novel reveals the making of doctors--what makes them tick, scheme, hurt . . . and love...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction university 20th-century bildungsroman book coming-of-age -
![Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan]()
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe story of friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale": waiting for that man who will take their breath away... -
![Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto]()
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
![Closer (Methuen Modern Plays) by Patrick Marber]()
Closer (Methuen Modern Plays) by Patrick Marber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Closer, Patrick Marber has created a brilliant exploration into the brutal anatomy of modern romance, where a quartet of strangers meet, fall in love, and become caught up in a web of sexual desire and betrayal... -
![To the Wedding by John Berger]()
To the Wedding by John Berger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWith the sensuous eye and profound sense of history that have made him one of the most acclaimed living novelists, John Berger, author of G., tells the story of a wedding that takes place in a Europe that is approaching the end of the century, a place where everything has changed - and not even the certainties of love are exempt... -
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![A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill]()
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight... -
![Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan]()
Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsComplete and Unabridged... -
![A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow]()
A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAll about love, lust, and loneliness, the book introduces Vic Brown, a young working-class Yorkshireman. Vic is attracted to the beautiful but demanding Ingrid, and as their relationship grows and changes, he comes to terms the hard way with adult life and what it really means to love...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century book contemporary fiction historical-fiction literary -
![Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks]()
Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsShimmering with suspense and emotional intensity - takes readers on a hunt for the truth about a man and his memories, and about both the heartbreaking fragility and enormous strength of love.Nicholas Sparks is our very best chronicler of the human heart... -
![On Love by Alain de Botton]()
On Love by Alain de Botton
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills and pitfalls of romantic love. The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love... -
![Riders by Jilly Cooper]()
Riders by Jilly Cooper
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSet against the glorious Cotswold countryside and the playgrounds of the world, Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles, Riders, Rivals, Polo, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Appassionata and Score!, offer an intoxicating blend of skulduggery, swooning romance, sexual adventure and hilarious high jinks... -
![The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, جبران خليل جبران]()
The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, جبران خليل جبران
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man... -
![Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran]()
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene... -
![The Abortion by Richard Brautigan]()
The Abortion by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA reclusive young man works in a San Francisco library for unpublishable books. Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable... -
![The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt]()
The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDavid Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man... -
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![High Fidelity by Nick Hornby]()
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsNow a major motion picture from Touchstone Pictures.Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved... -
![The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue]()
The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAlternative cover edition here.The Hunting Gun, set in the period immediately following WWII, follows the consequences of a tragic love affair among well-to-do people in an exclusive suburb of the great commercial cities of Osaka and Kobe. Told from the viewpoints of three different women, this is a story of the psychological impact of illicit love... -
![The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard]()
The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage written by her husband Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie... -
![The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes]()
The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsConsidered to be António Lobo Antunes's masterpiece, The Land at the End of the World--now in a new and fully restored translation by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa--recounts the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction historical-fiction -
![No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym]()
No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDulcie Mainwaring, the heroine of the book, is one of those excellent women who is always helping others and never looking out for herself- especially in the realms of love. The novel has a delicate tangle of schemes and unfulfilled dreams, hidden secrets and a castle or two. Told wonderfully in the deadpan honesty that has become a Pym hallmark, this book is a delight... -
![Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie]()
Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis is the story of a love-smitten Charles; his friend Sam, the Phi Beta Kappa and former coat salesman; and Charles' mother, who spends a lot of time in the bathtub feeling depressed...
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