Books like 'The Way We Live Now'
Readers who enjoyed The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsAnton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels. Here, brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky... -
Animal Farm / 1984 by George Orwell
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThis edition features George Orwell’s best-known novels—1984 and Animal Farm—with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party...Categorized as:
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One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest : A Play in Two Acts by Dale Wasserman, Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsComedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet... -
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAt the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage...Categorized as:
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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... -
A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHeartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetBridget has always been the one to take on the responsibility for looking after her family... -
The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice - Volume 3 of 5 by Cao Xueqin, David Hawkes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"The Story of the Stone (c. 1760)", also known by the title of "The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "The Warning Voice" is the third, it charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family)... -
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:
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Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNow, in her first novel, repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen lives after a racist beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small 1950s Mississippi town.Chicago-born Armstrong Tood is fifteen, black, and unused to the ways of the segregated Deep South, when his mother sends him to spend the summer with relatives in rural Mississippi... -
A Daughter’s Dream by Cathy Sharp
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHeartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetAmy Robinson and her fiance Matthew are struggling to resist the temptations faced by a soon-to-be-wed couple. To avoid these, Matthew throws himself into a new job and she goes to work in an exclusive new dress shop, where she meets Mary Maitland...Categorized as:
historical-fiction family epic literary-fiction female-mc psychological romance 20th-century -
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River, an immersive, propulsive novel about a missing child whose disappearance sends equal shockwaves through three very different worlds—an opulent Adirondack summer estate, the rustic teen summer camp that operates in its shadow, and the blue-collar community that serves them both... -
The Debt of Tears by Cao Xueqin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known by the title of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which The Debt of Tears is the fourth, The Story of the Stone charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family)... -
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHandsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris...Categorized as:
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Beatrix, the Baron and His Dog by G.L. Robinson
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA Pair as Opposite as Opposite can be!After harrowing experiences in the Napoleonic Wars and suffering from what we would now recognise as PTSD, half-English, half-German Lukas is making a home for his mother and sister in the leafy green of England...Categorized as:
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What You Promised by Adele Clee
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHe promised his name and his protection - but he never promised his love.Matthew Chandler built his fortune catering to the debauched antics of the ton. But one turn of the cards threatens everything he’s worked hard to achieve. Suspecting foul play at the gaming table, Matthew needs time and money if he has any hope of uncovering the plot to ruin him...Categorized as:
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Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMahasweta Devi is one of India’s foremost literary figures, a prolific and best-selling author in Bengali of short fiction and novels, and a deeply political social activist who has been working in marginalized communities for decades... -
Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe third in Susan Howatch's Church of England novels, ULTIMATE PRIZES begins in 1942 with the world at war, as narrator and archdeacon Nevill Aysgarth finds himself falling into a hopeless obsession over Dido Tallent, beautiful celebrity, and finds himself pursuing her through a swamp of guilt and the destruction of his valued moral compass....From the Paperback edition... -
Tales and Sketches by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis Library of America volume offers what no reader has ever been able to find—an authoritative edition of all the tales and sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne in a single comprehensive volume...Categorized as:
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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...Categorized as:
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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... -
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 . .Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction politics satire 20th-century -
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House / Ghosts / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen, James McFarlane
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTaken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Ibsen, this collection of Ibsen's plays includes A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder... -
Road Ends by Mary Lawson
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a perfect August morning in 1967, above a river just outside a small town in the north of Canada, a young man meets his death. And so begins the unravelling of his best friend Tom's already precarious family.Eighteen months on, and the town of Struan is in the grip of winter. Still reeling from his friend's death, Tom has dropped out and spends his days driving a snow plough... -
The Alienist by Machado de Assis
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA classic work of literature by “the greatest author ever produced in Latin America.” (Susan Sontag) Brilliant physician Simão Bacamarte sacrifices a prestigious career to return home and dedicate himself to the budding field of psychology. Bacamarte opens the first asylum in Brazil hoping to crown himself and his hometown with “imperishable laurels... -
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Destroyed & Restored: The Baron's Courageous Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA fearful lady. A shamed lord. And a hand at cards that will change both their lives. Terrified of her father’s temper, LADY ADELAIDE has lived a life of complete obedience. However, now, when her father threatens to gamble away her hand in marriage in the next card game, she turns to a trusted friend for help...Categorized as:
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Ruined & Redeemed: The Earl's Fallen Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsShe was the victim of a heinous crime. Then, she sought revenge. He seeks to punish his father And finds more than he bargained for. Once Lady Charlotte Frampton had been a young debutante, hoping to find a husband who would win her heart. Then, one night shattered everything and turned her life into a nightmare and herself into a monster...Categorized as:
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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... -
Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOriginally written and slated for publication in 1939, this long-forgotten masterpiece was shelved by Random House when The Grapes of Wrath met with wide acclaim...Categorized as:
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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... -
The Measure of Silence by Elizabeth Langston
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTwo sisters fulfilling their grandfather’s dying wish uncover decades of secrets in a powerful novel about family, truth, and forgiveness.Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past...Categorized as:
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The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMuch against his will, the Duke of Omnium consents to lead a coalition government. The Duchess quickly becomes a social figure of great power: with abounding and sometimes indiscriminate hospitality she strives to consolidate his support. Together they make their way to the centre of society and, like Phineas Finn before them, they find it hollow...Categorized as:
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The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPlantagenet Palliser must face new challenges and a changing world if he is to hold his family together in the final installment of the Palliser Novels. After losing his devoted wife, Glencora, Duke Plantagenet Palliser takes on a task he has never had the time or skills to bother with before: dealing with his children...Categorized as:
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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... -
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlternate-cover edition for ISBN 0865470561 / 9780865470569 can be found here The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs... -
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The Beast Within by Émile Zola
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHis haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics.Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past...Categorized as:
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Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPossessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tashi, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to voluntarily submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated (pharoanoically circumcised)...Categorized as:
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Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962 by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis Library of America volume is the second of three volumes that contain the most authoritative versions of the English works of the brilliant Russian émigré, Vladimir Nabokov.Lolita (1955), Nabokov’s single most famous work, is one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time...Categorized as:
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Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings'What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his master, that we are ignorant of our duties, old-fashioned, and useless!' Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed...Categorized as:
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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...Categorized as:
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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:
historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire action-adventure adult book coming-of-age -
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, were born with the century on a farm on the English-Welsh border. For eighty years they live on the farm--sharing the same clothes, tilling the same soil, sleeping in the same bed. Their lives and the lives of their neighbors--farmers, drovers, clergymen, traders, coffin-makers--are only obliquely touched by the chaos of twentieth-century progress... -
A Million Drops by Víctor del Árbol
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn intense literary thriller that tears through the interlocked histories of fascism and communism in Europe without pausing for breath. Gonzalo Gil is a disaffected lawyer stuck in a failed career and a strained marriage, dodging the never-ending manipulation of his powerful father-in-law... -
Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWalter Bridge is an ambitious lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he senses that his family needs something, even when what they need is more of him and less of his money. Affluence, material assets, and comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within - not the skeleton in the closet but a black hole swallowing the whole household...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult anthologies -
Phineas Redux: Special Edition by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe fourth novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands on its own as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy. Phineas Finn lives quietly in Dublin, resigned to the fact that his political career is over and coming to terms with the death of his wife...Categorized as:
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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... -
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEdwin Mullhouse, a novelist at 10, is mysteriously dead at 11. As a memorial, Edwin's bestfriend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons... -
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him - all are used as fodder for his art... -
The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEdith Wharton’s full and glamorous life bridged the literary worlds of two continents and two centuries. Born in 1862 into an exclusive New York society against whose rigid codes of behavior she often rebelled, she lived to regret the passing of that stable if old-fashioned community and to appreciate the sense of personal identity its definitions provided...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction historical-fiction humor satire fiction historical 20th-century -
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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Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsBazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction politics social-commentary
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