Books like 'New Boy'
Readers who enjoyed New Boy by Tracy Chevalier also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century psychological historical-fiction retellings literary-fiction classics coming-of-age drama friendship
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure -
![Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali]()
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... -
![Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright]()
Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTime Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg]()
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWoman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult book -
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![The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See]()
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsIn their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic 20th-century -
![The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis]()
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsWhen she is sent to an orphanage at the age of eight, Beth Harmon soon discovers two ways to escape her surroundings, albeit fleetingly: playing chess and taking the little green pills given to her and the other children to keep them subdued...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
![The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee]()
The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.Dan Freeman, the spook who sat by the door, is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic 20th-century adult -
![Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes]()
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA big, powerful saga of men in combat, written over the course of thirty-five years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran.Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
![Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin]()
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:
classics coming-of-age crime historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic 20th-century -
![Body and Soul by Frank Conroy]()
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 historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century book -
![The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk]()
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsUpon its original publication in 1951, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was immediately embraced as one of the first serious works of fiction to help readers grapple with the human consequences of World War II... -
![A History of Loneliness by John Boyne]()
A History of Loneliness by John Boyne
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPropelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good."Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church... -
![Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers]()
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 coming-of-age crime friendship romance fiction historical -
![The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis]()
The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Murderess is a bone-chilling tale of crime and punishment with the dark beauty of a backwoods ballad. Set on the dirt-poor Aegean island of Skiathos, it is the story of Hadoula, an old woman living on the margins of society and at the outer limits of respectability. Hadoula knows about herbs and their hidden properties, and women come to her when they need help...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
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![Swann's Way by Marcel Proust]()
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsMarcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
![Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham]()
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... -
![Brodeck by Philippe Claudel]()
Brodeck by Philippe Claudel
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult -
![The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote]()
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the short story...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction -
![A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean]()
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Promise by Chaim Potok]()
The Promise by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratings“A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly.” — The Philadelphia InquirerYoung Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
![Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
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 crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
![The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham]()
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBased on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer]()
Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war... -
![The Waves (Annotated) by Virginia Woolf, Molly Hite]()
The Waves (Annotated) by Virginia Woolf, Molly Hite
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, standing with those few works of twentieth-century literature that have created unique forms of their own. In deeply poetic prose, Woolf traces the lives of six children from infancy to death who fleetingly unite around the unseen figure of a seventh child, Percival...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult -
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![The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien]()
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis depicts the men of Alpha Company. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
![Random Harvest by James Hilton]()
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 realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Outsider by Richard Wright]()
The Outsider by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Wright presents a compelling story of a black man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself, a man who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult audiobook -
![The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, Rajendra A. Chitnis]()
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:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson]()
Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs two pals wander the streets of Belfast in search of something better--a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now--readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes...Categorized as:
classics crime friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner]()
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 Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf]()
The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of , is a powerfully eloquent tribute to the arduous demands of rural America, and of the tenacity of the human spirit.Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic -
![A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr]()
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
![A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving]()
A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEmily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times... -
![Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose]()
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David MametA blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century audiobook -
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![Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis]()
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe classic novel, international sensation, and inspiration for the film starring Anthony Quinn explores the struggle between the aesthetic and the rational, the inner life and the life of the mind.The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein]()
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
![Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram]()
Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is a novel by the author of Hold Tight...Categorized as:
drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction -
![Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner]()
Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!William Faulkner was a master of the short story...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction gothic -
![The Ogre by Michel Tournier]()
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... -
![Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton]()
Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult anthologies female-author -
![The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev]()
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 Missing Daughter by Emily Gunnis]()
The Missing Daughter by Emily Gunnis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the author of the runaway bestseller The Girl in the Letter comes a heartwrenching, twisting novel of betrayal, tragedy and a shocking family secret buried for decades.1960. Thirteen-year-old Rebecca lives in fear of her father’s temper. As a storm batters Seaview Cottage one night, she hears a visitor at the door and a violent argument ensues...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book -
![Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth]()
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSacred Hunger is a stunning and engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed. Filled with the "sacred hunger" to expand its empire and its profits, England entered full into the slave trade and spread the trade throughout its colonies...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century 21st-century -
![The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig]()
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort... -
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![Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker]()
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:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century abuse adult -
![The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris]()
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY BESTSELLEROn a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously...Categorized as:
coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
![Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford]()
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 friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic -
![Native Son by Richard Wright]()
Native Son by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsWright's powerful and bestselling masterpiece reflects the poverty and hopelessness of life in inner-city America--and what it is to be black in America. "This new edition give us a Native Son in which the key line in the key scene is restored to the great good fortune of American letters".--Los Angeles Times...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic -
![Embers by Sándor Márai]()
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... -
![Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki]()
Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHailed by The New Yorker as "rich in understanding and insight," Kokoro — "the heart of things" — is the work of one of Japan's most popular authors. This thought-provoking trilogy of stories explores the very essence of loneliness and stands as a stirring introduction to modern Japanese literature...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama friendship historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century
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