Books like 'The Darkest Child'
Readers who enjoyed The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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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... -
The Secrets of the Tea Garden by Janet MacLeod Trotter
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsShe’s gone in search of happy memories. But was her idyllic childhood in India an illusion? After the Second World War, Libby Robson leaves chilly England for India, and the childhood home where she left her heart—and her beloved father, James—fourteen years ago. At first Libby is intoxicated by India’s vibrant beauty: the bustle of Calcutta, the lush tea gardens of Assam...Categorized as:
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Three Sisters by Heather Morris
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA promise to stay together.An unbreakable bond.A fierce will to survive.From international bestselling author Heather Morris comes the breathtaking conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy.When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what.Years later, at just 15 years old, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis...Categorized as:
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The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of his best-known works, Hughes wrote The Ways of White Folks while living in Carmel, California. In it, he shares acrid and poignant stories of blacks colliding--sometimes humorously, but often tragically--with whites throughout the 1920s and 1930s...Categorized as:
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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:
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If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsIn this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned...Categorized as:
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A Royal Visit to Victory Street by Pam Howes
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom Amazon charts bestseller Pam Howes comes an emotional and uplifting saga about the power of family and a community trying to rebuild their lives after the terrible war that nearly destroyed everything…1956, Liverpool. With the shadow of the war looming over them and bomb craters littering the surrounding streets, hope feels far away for the residents of Victory Street... -
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 -
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe place is the Deep South, the time 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur... -
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:
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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:
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All the Forgivenesses by Elizabeth Hardinger
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in Appalachia and the Midwest at the turn of the twentieth century, this exquisite debut novel paints an intimately rendered portrait of one resilient farm family's challenges and hard-won triumphs--helmed by an unforgettable heroine. Growing up on their hardscrabble farm in rural Kentucky, fifteen-year-old Albertina "Bertie" Winslow has learned a lot from her mama, Polly...Categorized as:
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The Road to Bittersweet by Donna Everhart, Amy Melissa Bentley
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in the Carolinas in the 1940s, The Road to Bittersweet is a beautifully written, evocative account of a young woman reckoning not just with the unforgiving landscape, but with the rocky emotional terrain that leads from innocence to wisdom.For fourteen-year-old Wallis Ann Stamper and her family, life in the Appalachian Mountains is simple and satisfying, though not for the tenderhearted...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama family female-mc historical-fiction north-america usa 20th-century -
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings“The civil rights struggle,” said The New York Times Book Review, “found eloquent expression in [Baldwin’s] novels. His historical importance is indisputable.” Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin’s reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence... -
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The Secret Diary by Anna Stuart
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTwo women. One house. And a secret that spans decades…The past merges with the present in an unforgettable, poignant story of love, loss and courage in this beautifully written story set between World War Two and the present day.She steps into the room and it’s like going back in time.Catapulting her right into the heart of the 1940s.The spindle of the record player frozen and ready to play...Categorized as:
family female-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction -
Hatter's Castle by A.J. Cronin
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHatter's Castle (1931) is the first novel of author A. J. Cronin. The story is set in 1879, in the fictional town of Levenford, on the Firth of Clyde. The plot revolves around many characters and has many subplots, all of which relate to the life of the hatter, James Brodie, whose narcissism and cruelty gradually destroy his family and life... -
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiane McKinney-Whetstone's lyrical first novel, Tumbling, vividly captures a tightly knit African-American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the forties and fifties. Its central characters, Herbie and Noon, are a loving but unconventional couple whose marriage remains unconsummated for many years as Noon struggles to repossess her sexuality after a brutal attack in her past... -
Sista brevet till Sverige by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBook Four portrays the Nilsson family during the turmoil of living through the era of the Civil War and Dakota Conflict and their prospering in the midst of Minnesota's growing Swedish community of the 1860s-90s...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction north-america usa 20th-century adult -
Duet for Three Hands by Tess Thompson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA story of forbidden love, lost dreams, and family turmoil. The first book in a new historical series from bestselling author Tess Thompson, Duet for Three Hands is equal parts epic love story, sweeping family saga, and portrait of days gone by. Set against the backdrop of the American South between 1928 and 1934, four voices blend to tell a tale of prejudice, fear, and love... -
The Girl in the Photo by Catherine Hokin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTheresienstadt Concentration Camp, 1944. ‘I have to go away, my darling. Please, be brave, stay alive, for me.’ Mama’s voice breaks. The little girl tries to stop the forbidden tears from falling, as the train takes her mother, and she is left alone…Berlin, six years later. Hanni Winter glows with pride as she shows her new husband around her first solo photography exhibition...Categorized as:
coming-of-age female-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction -
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... -
The Traveller's Daughter by Michelle Vernal
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsROSA’S PAST IS HER PANDORA’S BOX, AND THE LID IS ABOUT TO BE LIFTED … ‘If you lie down with dogs you’ll rise with fleas’ – Irish Proverb Rosa Sorenson’s conversation was often peppered with sayings from her homeland. It was these conversational clangers that gave her daughter Kitty the only clue as to a childhood her mother refused to speak of...Categorized as:
family female-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction -
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan... -
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... -
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An Ordinary Woman: An utterly captivating and uplifting story of one woman’s strength and determination… by Susan Sallis
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen Rose was four the scandal broke about her head. She was really too young to understand what was happening - only that her mother was in disgrace and that they were leaving Aunt Mabe in America and returning home to England. The following May, Joanna - 'Jon' - was born. Rose and Jon were totally different... -
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:
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Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn a poor town in Kansas, an African American family struggles. At its centre sits Sandy Rodgers - a young boy attempting to find purpose amid the chaos, meagreness and music of his surroundings...Categorized as:
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The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsConsidered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels...Categorized as:
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Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe wonderful sequel to The Light Years returns readers to Britain in September, 1939, as war breaks out. Sheltered Louise, now 16, goes from cooking school to London parties. For 14-year-old Polly, the terrors of war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence. And though Clary's father has been reported missing since Dunkirk, she holds to the belief that he's alive...Categorized as:
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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... -
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsBo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune—in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest... -
The Street by Ann Petry
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsThe Street tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print... -
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:
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The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFourteen-year-old Tish, living in Yonkers, New York, chronicles her family's problems and experiences during a seven month period in 1900...Categorized as:
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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... -
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... -
Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Nellie Y. McKay
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis modern classic is “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem—with a foreword by James Baldwin ( Publishers Weekly ). Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family...Categorized as:
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Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSeptember 2003 marked the 50th anniversary of Maud Martha, the only novel published by esteemed poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Initially entitled "American Family Brown" the work would eventually come to symbolize some of Brooks' most provocative writing. In a novel that captures the essence of Black life, Brooks recognizes the beauty and strength that lies within each of us...Categorized as:
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Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“No one except perhaps Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker“A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material... -
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:
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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... -
All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe final book in the landmark Cazalet Chronicles, recently broadcast on BBC Radio...Categorized as:
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The Short Stories by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963--the most comprehensive available--showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction black-mc poc-mc fiction anthologies 20th-century historical -
The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.‘We’re waiting. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up...Categorized as:
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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 drama family female-mc coming-of-age literary-fiction fiction audiobook -
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBeginning in the late 1950s, this novel tells the story of Marietta Cook, a tall girl growing up in Pine Gardens, a Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina. When Marietta's mother dies, she heads to Charleston in search of her uncle - only to find a lover and return pregnant with twins two years later... -
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 -
The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom an award-winning novelist, a stunning portrait of late Raj India—a sweeping saga and a love story set against a background of huge political and cultural upheaval.YOU ASK FOR MY NAME, THE REAL ONE, AND I CANNOT TELL. IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF EFFORT. In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl...Categorized as:
coming-of-age female-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult audiobook -
Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, Mary Helen Washington
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA vivid and bittersweet classic coming-of-age tale, set in immigrant Brooklyn. Remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control. --The New Yorker An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears...Categorized as:
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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
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