Books like 'Marjorie Morningstar'
Readers who enjoyed Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical romance psychological 20th century classics historical-fiction coming-of-age literary-fiction drama ww2
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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... -
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Sally Beauman
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 80 ratingsLast night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book crime -
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsCan a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be...Categorized as:
drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
Her Mother's Hope by Francine Rivers
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 26 ratings2011 Retailers Choice Award winner!The first in an epic two-book saga by beloved author Francine Rivers, this sweeping story explores the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters over several generations. Near the turn of the 20th century, fiery Marta leaves Switzerland determined to find life on her own terms... -
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Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction urban 20th-century adult alternate-history -
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism. Harriet asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult amateur-sleuth audiobook -
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction family coming-of-age romance fiction historical audiobook -
Her Last Promise by Kathryn Hughes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA mysterious letter from Spain. A surprising new beginning... Fall in love this summer with Her Last Promise, a gripping, heartwrenching story of how hope can blossom in the ruins of tragedy and of the redeeming power of love. From No. 1 bestselling author Kathryn Hughes. Tara Richards was just a girl when she lost her mother... -
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 -
Where the Heart Is by Annie Groves
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA fabulous drama of the Campion family, struggling to stay together as World War Two rages over Liverpool Lou Campion has joined the WAAFs, against the wishes of her parents and twin sister Sasha. Lou's always been a rebel, but now finds that if she wants to succeed she'll have to follow extremely strict rules... -
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 Last Kiss by Sally Malcolm
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA tender and triumphant story of forbidden love in the aftermath of warWhen Captain Ashleigh Arthur Dalton went to war in 1914, he never expected to fall in love. Yet over three long years at the front, his dashing batman, Private West, became his reason for fighting—and his reason for living.But Ash’s war ends in catastrophe...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult angst book british-isles -
Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsStefan's Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories, appearing in English for the first time.A famous author receives a letter on his forty-first birthday...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook epistolary feminism -
The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the ghettos of wartime Warsaw, this is a sweeping, poignant and heartbreaking tale, based on the true story of one of World War II's quiet heroes - Dr Janusz Korczak.'You do not leave a sick child alone to face the dark and you do not leave a child at a time like this.'Deeply in love and about to marry, students Misha and Sophia flee a Warsaw under Nazi occupation for a chance at freedom... -
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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...Categorized as:
bildungsroman classics coming-of-age drama epic historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century -
In His Father's Footsteps by Danielle Steel
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this powerful novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel tells the story of two World War II concentration camp survivors, the life they build together, and the son who faces struggles of his own as a first generation American determined to be his own person and achieve success. When U.S... -
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 Marriage of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLaurie R. King takes readers way back in her bestselling series with this exclusive ebook short story, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark upon the riskiest adventure of their their wedding. Includes a special preview of the highly anticipated new mystery from Laurie R...Categorized as:
historical-fiction romance mystery fiction historical audiobook suspense action-adventure -
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsReturning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
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Random Harvest by James Hilton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCharles Rainier, a prosperous Briton, loses his memory as a result of shellshock in the First World War...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Ancient Tillage by Raduan Nassar
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of “the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table, and our family.” He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father, who preaches from the head of the table as if from a pulpit, and loathes himself as he begins to harbor shameful feelings for his sister Ana... -
Now, Voyager (The Vale Novels) by Olive Higgins Prouty
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the stars!" The film that concludes with Bette Davis's famous words, reaffirmed Davis's own stardom and changed the way Americans smoked cigarettes. But few contemporary fans of this story of a woman's self-realization know its source...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
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... -
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The Wedding Tree by Robin Wells
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsNational bestselling author Robin Wells weaves a moving epic that stretches from modern-day Louisiana to World War II-era New Orleans and back again in this multigenerational tale of love, loss and redemption. Hope Stevens thinks Wedding Tree, Louisiana, will be the perfect place to sort out her life and all the mistakes she’s made... -
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... -
In Love by Alfred Hayes
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNew York in the 1950s. A man on a barstool is telling a story about a woman he met in a bar, early married and soon divorced, her child farmed out to her parents, good-looking, if a little past her prime. They’d gone out, they’d grown close, but as far as he was concerned it didn’t add up to much. He was a busy man. Then one day, out dancing, she runs into a rich awkward lovelorn businessman... -
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter enduring an injury at Dunkirk during World War II, Laurie Odell is sent to a rural veterans’ hospital in England to convalesce. There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsYoung, beautiful, and adventurous Nicola Ferris loves her life as a secretary at the British Embassy on the lush island of Crete. Then on her day off, she links up with two hiking companions who have inadvertently stumbledupon a scene of blood vengeance. And suddenly the life Nicola adores is in danger of coming to an abrupt, brutal, and terrifying end . -
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsIn 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction ww2 20th-century -
Embers by Sándor Márai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAs darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, two men sit down to a final dinner together. They have not seen one another in forty-one years. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered - and each of them alone...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
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 literary-fiction ww2 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult -
The Pearl Locket by Kathleen McGurl
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWe’ll Meet Again… When Ali inherits her great-aunt’s house she immediately moves her whole family in, despite the warnings that there is something strange about the place. Unfazed Ali begins redecorating, going through the rooms, making each one her own with the help of her daughter, Kelly... -
半生缘 by Eileen Chang, 张爱玲
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom one of twentieth-century China's greatest writers and the author of Lust, Caution, this is an unforgettable story of a love affair set in 1930s Shanghai. Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shujun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart...Categorized as:
classics epic family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
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The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe inhabitants of a small community are interlinked by the healer at its heart, Nick Darrow. There is Alice, the romantic but also an outcast; Lewis the priest, an irascible traditionalist; Francie, who has a desire to be loved; and Stacy, a young trainee looking for faith and direction... -
Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBuck follows one woman's journey through a long-term marriage; its romanticized beginning, jolts of disillusionments and losses, and peace through acceptance and faith; as a metaphor for life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction family romance 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:
classics drama literary-fiction historical-fiction family coming-of-age romance fiction -
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...Categorized as:
drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult audiobook -
Remembrance by Jude Deveraux
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsBestselling romance writer Hayden Lane has found her soul mate - or rather, created him: he's her latest fictional hero. And she's totally obsessed with him. Barely noticing when her real-life fiance breaks their engagement, she visits a psychic to learn more about him - and is told that in a past life Hayden was Lady de Grey, a promiscuous woman of Edwardian England... -
The Widow's War by Sally Cabot Gunning
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMarried for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler's wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—running their house herself during her husband's long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book early-modern feminism -
The Children of Freedom by Marc Levy
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA remarkable story of struggle and survival in World War II by France's No. 1 bestselling novelist Early in 1942, two young brothers join a Resistance group. All the members of the group are young, most of their families came from elsewhere in Europe or North Africa and all of them are passionately committed to the freedom of France and Europe...Categorized as:
drama family historical-fiction ww2 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure audiobook -
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsPhilip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAnd indeed Mr. Briggs seemed very much interested. He wanted to hear all about everything she had been doing from the moment she got there...Categorized as:
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The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIt is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in an institution, the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century abuse -
Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLove for Lydia was the first novel with an English setting that H.E. Bates wrote after the second world war, and it was his own favourite among his Northamptonshire novels. The Northants setting becomes the background both ugly and beautiful for the story of a young girl, the daughter of a decaying aristocratic household, and her lovers, of which the most important is the narrator himself...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
The Shadow Catcher by Michelle Paver, Anna Bentinck
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the depths of the lush Jamaican forest stands a ruined house of haunting beauty. Abandoned for decades, it still casts its spell down the generations - a place of dreams, magic and madness. Worlds away, ten-year-old Madeleine's untroubled Scottish childhood is cut short after a fateful encounter with the handsome but hostile Cameron Lawe... -
A White Room by Stephanie Carroll
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt the close of the Victorian Era, society still expected middle-class women to be “the angels of the house,” even as a select few strived to become something more. In this time of change, Emeline Evans dreamed of becoming a nurse... -
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 32 ratings"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles... -
Swann in Love by Marcel Proust
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe newest translation of the classic of French literature From the text: But at the age Swann was approaching, where one is already a little disillusioned and where he knows to be content at being in love simply for the pleasure of it, without demanding too much in return, this coming together of two hearts, if it is no longer, as it was in one's youth, the goal that love, by necessity, tends...
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